


Memento Caritate

by yonderdarling



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/F, F/M, First Time, Flashbacks, M/M, Mismatched Doctor/Master, Neck Kissing, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:41:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24857803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonderdarling/pseuds/yonderdarling
Summary: She's not looking for the Master. He's dead, besides.And she's found Missy. Or rather -- Missy finds her.
Relationships: The Doctor | Theta Sigma/The Master | Koschei (Doctor Who: Academy Era), The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/Missy, Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan), Thrissy - Relationship
Comments: 34
Kudos: 68





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [missysthirteen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missysthirteen/gifts).



> Requested by the wonderful and infinitely patient missysthirteen on tumblr, many many moons ago (before -- most of 2020 happened). They asked for, among other things "Missy/13 first-time smut," "Thirteen learning her body," and "talk about their children." I don't know how I went from that to this, but they also said I could be flexible, and I appreciate that very much.

**13.2**

  
First things first. She’s _not_ looking for the Master. He’s been dead before, but actually alive (Gods above, how many times has she declared him dead only to find — ) anyway. Anyway. He’s dead, but probably not. And she’s not looking for him, she’s checking he’s dead. She’s scanning space-time for him, but that’s just about being sure. It’s nice being sure. The last time she was sure she was the last of the Time Lords -  
  
“Last of the Time Ladies,” the Doctor says aloud, quickly, and pulls a face. “Nah.”  
  
Funny, how Missy had happily taken the new moniker. The Doctor’s a woman now, and she loves it, but this new body sometimes just doesn’t fit; the misses and the ma’ams and the “excuse me, young lady, WHERE are you going with those salad tongs?” just grate, over and over again. She likes her new hips and her breasts and her yellow hair, and the curves of her legs, and then in certain times in certain planets (Earth it’s Earth, it’s Earth of course) she sees people trailing their eyes over them and it doesn’t upset, but it wrankles. She’s taking up space. She’s always taken up space, and no one questioned it when she was a man, but -  
  
Where was she, apart from not looking from the Master, rather, just checking he’s dead? The Doctor checks the scanner screen. Well, he’s not in the tri-sun system of Lunarassa, at least. The Master used to like the pan-galactic chess tournament they had from the 8200s to 8776 (then came the revolution) and Missy had certainly played a lot of chess while she was in the Vault. The Doctor shakes her head (don’t think about Missy) and flips the shields off briefly to re-scan the fifth moon of Atria-Morei (empty, not even a breathable atmosphere), and that’s when the TARDIS console explodes.  
  
(Inconvenient).   
  
The Doctor slides back across the floor, slams her shoulder against the bottom of the stairs. Sometimes it’d be nice if she was the kind of being who swore.   
  
“Ow!”  
  
Gripping her shoulder, the Doctor struggles up and runs back to the console, which steams angrily, the scanner screen flashing on and off, showing nothing but static, then black. Static, black. The Doctor slaps it with her good hand. A voice echoes through the TARDIS.  
  
“OPEN THE POD BAY DOORS, HAL.”  
  
A hideously familiar voice, and not in the 2001-A-Space-Odyssey kind of familiar. Regardless, the Doctor hurries around to the other side of the console, slams a button - the TARDIS doors swing open, and in stumbles a figure in a spacesuit, and the faceplate of said spacesuit is cracked right down the middle (old, old, usual spacesuits from this period are shatter and crack proof) but she can see blue eyes and pale skin and dark hair and -   
  
Oh, it’s 8451. Bugger. Bugger, bugger, why can’t she ever swear? Her last body at least did it occasionally.  
  
“Hi,” says Missy, and closes the doors behind her. “Great timing, even if you’re a lot younger and - less frowny.”  
  
“You can’t be here,” the Doctor says.  
  
“Ah, but I am.”  
  
“Ah, but you can’t?”  
  
“Please, Doctor,” says Missy, and there’s a waver of desperation in her voice, because it’s 8451, and the Doctor’s one weakness (she has so many) is beautiful women asking for her help. “Get us out of here.”  
  
It’s just a quick shift; space only, no time. Missy pulls the helmet off as the Doctor lands the TARDIS on Atria-Morei, and Missy tosses her hair out, so the landing is probably a little bumpier than it could have been, because the Doctor’s always loved Missy’s hair and she’s more than a little distractable this time round.   
  
The TARDIS falls silent; the Doctor’s face feels damp from the still-steaming console. Missy puts the helmet to one side, strips out of the spacesuit to reveal a dingy pair of what are probably prison fatigues; a dark blue misshapen jumper, and light grey pants made of heavy fabric, with reinforcement patches on the knees. She’s barefoot.  
  
Missy hates being barefoot. Well, Missy of the Vault did.  
  
“I like this,” says Missy, gesturing at the Doctor. “Very - gay. In both senses of the word.”  
  
“Thanks,” the Doctor says slowly. “How did you - “  
  
“Rudimentary teleport off Assaan-Buite after stealing one of the spacesuits they have sent in for repair,” Missy says. “Do you still have that room with the rotating spa bath?”  
  
The Doctor stares. Missy arches an eyebrow.   
  
“Perhaps I’ll just have a shower, then a snooze,” she says, and brushes past the Doctor, into the depths of the TARDIS and out of sight. Her footsteps echo, and then there’s nothing.  
  
The TARDIS makes a low groan, and the Doctor turns to the console as another jet of steam - nope, that’s smoke, that’s an issue - explodes out.   
  
“You couldn’t hold on for five minutes, could you?” She asks, rummaging in her pocket for her goggles. “Let’s just do a patch.”  
  
Perhaps it’s a good thing. The TARDIS warms up around her as she finds the culprit - the one of the coolant pipes has cracked, and is dripping into the lead-lined tea kettle that usually serves as a handy storage area for radon-infused spark plugs.   
  
“It’s a patch job,” the Doctor says, and hums to the TARDIS as she works, pretending she’s forgotten, and the TARDIS decides to pretend too.

*** * ***

**10.1**

  
In the seconds after the war ended, after Gallifrey, the Doctor had convulsed and cried and writhed on the floor when the planet was gone, an emptiness screaming in his skull. For the longest time, Gallifrey had seemed like a deadweight holding him down. He was wrong. The war was a deadweight. Gallifrey was Gallifrey was Gallifrey, was gravity and the ground and the colour and the concept of red, you didn't think about it until you needed it and then you couldn't survive without it. 

He'd always thought, in his youth, of Gallifrey as an anchor, dragging him down from the world of air and light and potential and wonder (up where they walk, up where they run). Gallifrey was the pivot around which he swung, the sun at the centre of the universe. Its presence kept his timeline straight, kept the moons in orbit, the shining jewel of the seven systems.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry" he sobs into the floor, hands gripping at his new skull, short buzzed hair, big ears, and he's all alone in the universe for the first time and he's got what he's always wanted and all it cost him was everything. 

When the Master returned, for the first time, in the mind of Professor Yana, in the guise of Harold Saxon, the Doctor had known. Of course. Who else could it be?

Saxon would barely look him, because when their skin touched, the last two Time Lords in creation, it felt like a comet hitting the earth. Without Gallifrey as the centrepoint, they were revolving around each other, spinning out of control with no one left to guide them. The Doctor cried when he died, the empty silence in his head screaming out with nothing but the spaces between stars hearing-

  
  
*** * ***

**13.3**

She gives up on scanning for the latest, feral, enraged version of the Master. At her worst, Missy is cutting rather than, well, a successful genocidaire. The woman of the hour is easy to find, lolling across a chaise longue in the blue library, fast asleep in silky pyjamas, all tucked up under under a knitted throw. She’s also found a goose-down pillow from somewhere. An empty teacup sits on the coffee table, a ring of tea around the bottom.   
  
The Doctor pauses in the doorway, watches Missy roll over onto her stomach. Quietly, carefully, the Doctor leans against the doorframe, touches the brass faceplate with her fingertips.   
  
“You’ve made this very easy,” she murmurs to the TARDIS. “You want her out of here quickly, hm?”  
  
The TARDIS is quiet, and the Doctor feels judged. Still, she crosses the room and kneels down beside Missy, stares at her face, trying to pick where they’re at in her timeline. Not that much can be told from a face. She’s not just watching Missy sleep (that was something only her previous self did, and only in the Vault). That would be wrong, and impractical, and she’s nothing but dispassionate and removed when it comes to the Master now. She - he - the Master, killed their people. Their people are dead. Again. There’s no mercy here, no sentiment, just an unwelcomingly familiar face and presence on one of her chairs.   
  
Missy’s dark hair curls along the pillow like spilled dark matter, lipstick smeared on the pillow like old blood. Should she start wearing lipstick? The Doctor touches her own mouth. Nah. She tried eyeliner that one time Yaz offered, and who knew how many times you could rub your eyes before Ryan took you to one side and told you that you looked like a panda?  
  
It’s not that she doesn’t like pandas; pandas are fine. They just don’t tend to do much, and she’s always been a do-something kind of person. Out of the ursidae family she’s probably more of a spectacled bear than anything else; she does have a wide and varied diet, and they like to get out and about in nature, and the tree climbing aspect is certainly a bonus. She’s not a fan of water this time around, can’t see herself living with otters this time around.   
  
She’s certainly not a koala (oh, please don’t call me a koala bear/cause I’m not a bear at all) though she did have a form of chlamidiya a few bodies back - how did she catch that again? She’s fairly certain Jack had something to do with it, or River. Medicines might be constantly improving, but bacteria evolves faster, no matter where or when or how you go. Perhaps a sun bear? Sun bears are quite short. She’s short, this time. Still taller than Missy though (lest said about Missy’s next self, the better, and even less thought, best), which would count for more if it was more than a couple of inches.   
  
Missy rolls over in her sleep, flat on her back, one hand curled into a loose fist on the pillow. Forgetting about bears (mostly - perhaps they should go to the Hundred-Acre Wood when she picks the fam back up) the Doctor leans across and trails her fingertips up the blue veins of Missy’s wrist, the bump at the end of her radius, up the soft skin, up to her pinky. Missy’s hand relaxes, unfurls. She should stop herself, but instead the Doctor leans across, presses a kiss to the centre of Missy’s palm, closing her eyes. Missy’s fingers are warm when she brushes them against the Doctor’s cheek. The Doctor leans back, sits on the floor crosslegged. Missy rolls onto her side, faces her properly.  
  
“You’ve gone soft in your old age,” Missy says. “Not that I’m averse to that, but what's this about?”  
  
“When are we?” The Doctor asks, and all of a sudden she’s sad about River too, not just Missy and the Vault and how - well, she (the Doctor) failed. She fell for Missy, and she fell for Missy’s lie about trying to be good, trying to get better, and everything they’d shared across the ninety-odd years in the Vault —“When did you last see me?”  
  
“You’re a silver fox with a guitar, and you left me to die on Skaro,” Missy says. “A few months ago, we texted. Just a check-in; you were talking about Zygon sleeper agents on Earth, I couldn’t bring myself to care.”   
  
The Doctor looks at Missy’s hand again, at the worn-down nails, the bruises against her knuckles. She misses River, River, with all her curls and her kindness and fierceness. Focus on River. River, who wrote to her (way back when) and said good was _only good_ in the darkest hour, the deepest pit - who’d inspired her to take Missy’s word and -   
  
“And when did you last see me?”  
  
About to die on Gallifrey with silvered skin and a broken soul and shattered hearts. “Uh, I think we - you’ve regenerated, unfortunately - we, we we - "  
  
“Oh this one’s a bad liar too,” says Missy, and trails her bruised hand across the Doctor’s cheekbone. “Well.” Missy sits up, studies the Doctor’s face. “Why do you look so sad, my dear? You’ve wanted to be a woman for decades.”  
  
“Yes, but it didn’t mean I’d constantly go around beaming about it once it happened,” the Doctor snaps, and Missy grins.   
  
“Have we had a fight or something?”  
  
The ‘we’ Missy uses is Gallifreyan; an informal collective pronoun that means ‘you currently, and a future version of myself.’ It’s an unsubtle way of reminding the Doctor that Missy’s not responsible for the Master’s latest mistakes. Still. (Still).   
  
“Where did you just escape from?”  
  
“Why don’t you guess?”  
  
“Uh - “ the Doctor lets her eyes trail down Missy’s form. “Well, prison.”  
  
“They were about to ship me off to Emenatori, Doctor dear,” Missy says. “Planet of the Executioners, not that you care.”  
  
Oh. So Missy’s mere months away from seemingly being put to death at the Doctor’s own hands. Everything is about to change for them–well, take on the resemblance of change. The only thing that’s changed, it seems, has been the Doctor’s gullibility. She doesn’t let herself think of Missy at the end, her eyes cold, staring through her as she begged for her to stand alongside her, just once, once, once (like they’d always wanted).   
  
“You tend not to stay dead.” Except this time (hopefully).   
  
Missy winks at the Doctor. “True.”  
  
“True.”  
  
“We’ve had a fight,” Missy says. “You and I.” Missy reaches across, trails those bruised knuckles down the Doctor’s cheek. “Did I hurt you, or did you just expect too much?” She studied the Doctor’s face. “You expect so much from everyone, and you’re always hurt when they let you down. Expect the worst, my dear. Then you’re only ever pleasantly surprised.”  
  
The Doctor doesn’t let herself lean into Missy’s touch (okay, perhaps a little). She turns her head, presses her lips to the bruises on Missy’s knuckles. Missy smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes, and the Doctor suddenly remembers the last time she saw Missy smiling like that, and she can smell the diesel of Cybermen, the smoke of the Master’s cigars lingering on his clothes, the cool scent of daffodils and see Missy’s eyes with tears but this Missy’s eyes are dry, calculating, uncompromising (and in a way, marvellously, _spectacularly_ uncomplicated).  
  
“I’ve missed you,” the Doctor says, and leans down and kisses her.   
  
Missy’s lips are warm, and soft, and familiar, and Missy chuckles darkly into her mouth. Kissing is good, she remembers kissing. She always means to do more kissing and then never does. Missy sits, pressing their mouths together, moving her hand from the Doctor’s face to curling her fingers through the Doctor’s hair, pulling lightly. Missy pulls back, studies the Doctor’s face closely, her blue eyes narrowing.  
  
“Two in a row,” Missy murmurs, kissing the Doctor again.   
  
It takes the Doctor a minute to place the comment, and then she remembers, so many years ago, a room of skeletons and blue light and Missy’s lithe form pressing her up against a wall, and -   
  
“Bit presumptuous,” the Doctor says, pulling away. She sits crosslegged on the floor again, raises her eyebrows at Missy. “For all you know, I could’ve shagged my way through over half the galaxy by now.” Ah, she’s missed an opportunity there (sixty-nine percent of the galaxy, perhaps).  
  
“Since when do you shag your way through the galaxy?” Missy asks. “Since when do either of us?”  
  
The Doctor’s about to reply to that, but she finds Missy kissing her again, Missy sliding off the chaise into her lap, Missy soft and silky-warm and pressing up against her, and -   
“I do have to ask, my dear,” Missy says, kissing down the Doctor’s neck, and it feels like ice-hot silver on her skin, “If you’d mind dropping me off somewhere in the vicinity of Gallifrey. When we’re finished off.”  
  
Women’s lips are softer. Women’s skin is softer. Soft on soft, curves on curves, oscillating. Missy tugs at the hem of the Doctor’s collar, brushes her lips along the Doctor’s clavicle.  
  
“Mrs Robinson, are you trying to seduce me for a ride home?” says the Doctor unthinkingly, not letting her brain think about Gallifrey, or anything in the vicinity thereof. “Or in the vicinity thereof?”  
  
Missy laughs, breath ghosting over the Doctor’s shoulder. “I suppose you get points for trying, my dear. I’d fuck you either way, Doctor. You’re the only thing in the galaxy worth waking up next to.” She kisses the Doctor, on the mouth this time, long and slow and soft. “But you’ll need to drop me home so I can pick myself out a new TARDIS. I blew up my vortex manipulator escaping Skaro, so you know. Home to Gallifrey, grab a TARDIS, exact a wee bit of revenge on Skaro, then - Doctor, what is that face?” Missy pouts, in mocking reflection.  
  
“Don’t look sad, of course I’m going to blow Skaro to tiny little insy-bitsy pieces. You know what they did to us.”  
  
“I’ve never known you to be so loyal,” says the Doctor slowly, refusing to let herself think any further than the next sentence. “To our - to the Time Lords.”  
  
“I know what they did to you, to us,” Missy says. She runs her thumb along the Doctor’s lower lip, the pressure increasing as she moves slowly from one side to the other. “Resurrected me to be the perfect warrior, forced you into fighting — and that’s just during the Time War.”  
  
There’s more kissing. The Doctor isn’t sure who starts it, but she ends up lying on the floor, Missy on top of her, pressing her back into the plush rug, kissing her gently, teasing at the bottom of her top, the waistband of her trousers. Kissing is more than enough, flooding her body with waves of heat. Kissing is great. Occasionally Missy’s bare fingers brush the Doctor’s bare waist, and it’s like sparks along her spine.   
  
“This is your first time in this body?” Missy whispers, lips against the Doctor’s ear. Now that makes the Doctor gasp, press her thighs together. “I’ll take that as a yes.”  
  
“Y-yes, It’s a yes,” the Doctor mumbles, with a sudden throb of nerves. She takes Missy’s face in her hand, moving her mouth back to hers. “You’re so gorgeous. That never changes. So - so sexy.”  
  
This body hasn’t said sexy before. It probably won’t again.   
  
“Sexy,” says the Doctor, and pulls a face.   
  
Missy laughs against her mouth, bites the Doctor’s bottom lip. “You’re a lot less overeager this time. The first time we fucked in your last body, I thought you’d break me in half.”  
  
Again, she’s overwhelmed by the (a) memory; Missy and her, in the graveyard of walking skeletons in metal cages; hours later, Missy and her, pressed together against the TARDIS console, sweating and gasping for air. 

*** * ***

**12.1**

  
  
She wakes up a number of hours later, the TARDIS on its early morning cycle, mostly buried under the duvet and delightfully warm and peaceful. She slowly becomes aware of the Doctor sleeping behind her, nose in her hair, warm breath on the back of her neck, one hand resting on the curve of her waist. She wriggles backwards until his chest is flush with her back, tangles their legs together and feels his heartsrate increase with every movement. Finally, she links her fingers in with his, waits for him to relax.  
  
"Do we really disgust you that much?" she asks.  
  
“No. You never disgust me. I want you, always you - ”  
  
“Explain the tension, then.”  
  
There's the sensation of movement, of yielding and calming behind her and the Doctor kisses the back of her neck. It takes a moment for him to speak.  
  
“No Time Lords, no Gallifrey, for so long, it's like I was knocked out of orbit. I had no grounding presence. I had to make my own. You felt it too, didn't you?" he waits, she says nothing. "That's why you barely laid a hand on me when we were on the Valiant, because you could feel it; that sensation of touching the only other living reminder of a non-existent planet."  
  
"Like getting off a sailing ship in a storm and being on the steady ground for the first time," she says. "Only a thousand times worse."   
  
The Doctor moves his hand across her stomach and splays his fingers out like iron bars, pulling her closer to him. His thumb skims the underside of her breast.   
  
"You seem to be getting used to it."  
  
"I missed you," he says, right in her ear.  
  
Her stomach flutters. _Traitor_. 

*** * ***

**13.4**

The Doctor trails her hands up Missy’s thighs, pulls a face. “I don’t like silk,” she says. “It feels slimy.”  
  
Missy sits back so she’s straddling the Doctor’s waist, grins down at her. “You know, a better line would be something like, ‘these trousers would look better on my bedroom floor.’”  
“Not used to you in trousers. You never wear trousers,” says the Doctor. “Even when I brought them to you.”  
  
Humming, Missy begins to shift, rubbing against the Doctor. Even through all their layers, the Doctor can feel how warm Missy is, belying her excitement. Then, Missy pauses, catches the Doctor’s wrist. Her fingers are strong, tight, tense, and then they loosen, pressing against the Doctor’s pulse point.  
  
“When do you ever bring me trousers, my love?” Missy asks. She looks down at the Doctor, brushes a strand of hair off of the Doctor’s forehead. “What happens, with us?” she asks. “Why are you sad, my dear?”  
  
“I’m not sad,” the Doctor lies. “I’m a little ticked off. We’re - “ Missy’s hand twists on her wrist. “We’re together, right now, we’ve just had a fight and you’ve gone off. Um, anyway. You just don’t like trousers this time around, do you?”  
  
Missy leans back, narrows those ice-chip eyes. “You know your wife. The latest one.”  
  
“Yes, intimately. Or, I did.”  
  
“Well, I could hear you thinking of her. All that - _the Doctor lies, rule one,_ nonsense she used to spout. She never tacked onto the end of the rule, ‘ _the Doctor always lies. They’re a shitty liar, though, so you can always tell._ ’” Missy strokes the Doctor’s cheek again. “I suppose she never knew you the way I know you. The way I knew you.” Missy leans in, kisses the Doctor gently. Oddly chaste. “I’ll always know you.”  
  
The Doctor breathes out. It’s shaky. Her chest feels hot and tight; her hearts thrum in her ears. She lets her hands trail down Missy’s sides, fiddle with the silky waistband of her silky pyjama trousers.   
  
“Anyway. I’m just desperate for you to get me out of these,” Missy says, and the Doctor laughs beneath her. “Let’s go to bed. I love being your first. I’m always your first. When it counts, anyway.”  
  
“When has it not counted?” The Doctor asks.  
  
“When I’ve not been the first.”  
  
Missy shifts off of the Doctor, stands, and the Doctor stands after her. Almost nose to nose, the Doctor kisses Missy gently. Smiling into her mouth, Missy snakes her arms around the Doctor’s waist, presses herself against her. Everything’s warm, a bit too silky.  
  
“We’re together in the future?” Missy asks, a strange note in her voice.  
  
“After a fashion,” says the Doctor, because that’s true (it’s true enough).   
  
(Aren’t they always?)  
  
There’s more kissing, and a vague attempt to shuffle towards the Doctor’s bedroom; that leads to them falling backwards onto the chaise and laughing, and more kissing, and Missy somehow denudes the Doctor of her coat before they can get back up again. Missy tugs down the edge of the Doctor’s top, licks along her clavicle again. She blows cool air along her path, raising the hairs on the Doctor’s skin. The Doctor shivers, and Missy chuckles.   
  
“You’re gorgeous,” Missy says, kisses the dip in her collarbones. “Let me take you to bed.”  
  
The Doctor surprises herself, laughing. “We’re trying to get there.”  
  
She takes Missy’s hand, laces their fingers together, and Missy trails after her, out of the library, down corridors and up stairs, and they get to the door of where the Doctor has been sleeping, and Missy presses the Doctor into the door, kisses her messily as the Doctor fumbles for the doorhandle, the doorframe pressing a blunt angle into her back. Missy yanks the Doctor’s suspenders down off her shoulders, and that just makes the handle more complicated.  
  
“How does this work?” The Doctor asks, and Missy bites her neck. “Oh, God, Missy - "  
  
Missy drops to her knees in front of the Doctor, which short-circuits something in the Doctor’s brain and she forgets how to talk, but at least she somehow deals with the doorhandle (did she break it?). The Doctor stumbles backwards and falls onto the bed, and Missy is on top of her within seconds, slipping a hand up her shirt -   
  
“You’re so fast - “  
  
“I want you,” Missy murmurs, pulling up the Doctor’s top up. “You don’t wear a bra? Oh, my dear, you’ll regret that in a couple of years - “  
  
“Structured support in the top,” the Doctor says.  
  
Missy pauses for a moment. “Hm,” she says.   
  
“I do love the corsets though,” the Doctor says, remembering what Missy usually wears under her clothes, and want suddenly throbs through her like a sun flare. “Oh, God, Missy, I loved the corsets - "  
  
“I don’t have one on right now, silly,” says Missy. She pokes the Doctor in the nose. “You do, don’t you? Your Mistress all laced up tight?”  
  
The Doctor covers her mouth to stop herself moaning, and nods. She shifts, feels how wet she is, her shaking thighs, the tightness in her chest. Missy flicks her thumb over her nipple, pinches, and grins when the Doctor whimpers.   
  
“Can I - " the Doctor says and swallows. Missy keeps playing with her nipple, licking at the Doctor’s neck, breath hot on the Doctor’s burning skin. “Um, Missy - "

“ _Doctor_.”  
  
“Missy, can you just - “ The Doctor tries to swallow again. “Actually, Missy.”  
  
Missy stops, rolls off of the Doctor, turns on the rumpled bedclothes to face her. “My dear?”  
  
“It’s my first time.”  
  
“Yes, I know.”  
  
“No,” says the Doctor. She sits up, pulling her top back down. She breathes out, sucks a breath in. “First time anything in this body. First time - well, no I hugged Yaz’s mum.”  
  
“And who’s Yaz when she’s at home?”  
  
“She’s a mate, she’s brilliant.”  
  
“Hm,” says Missy. “You know the first thing I did when I was settled into this body was figure out how the hair worked, whether it bites its nails and then hopped in bed with a lot of lube and exciting rubbery things that go ‘buzz.’” She pauses, thinks. “I mean, I definitely had other things to do, but that regeneration is a little hazy. I always do that. You’ve got to know the body, my dear.”  
  
“I never have time to - “ the Doctor rolls her eyes. “ _Know the body_.”  
  
“You have to know the body, so you can control it. So you’re not a slave to its urges, its sad little wants and needs.”  
  
She could point out that oftentimes she doesn’t have time to “know the body” because she’s too busy trying to sort out whatever mess her regenerating self has fallen into or created or is escaping, and more than once she’s been regenerating because of Missy’s actions. 

  
*** * ***

  
**10.2**   
  


  
When the Master returned for the second time, because who else could it be, the Doctor's chest swelled and his hearts stuttered and the emptiness was gone gone gone.

"That," said the Master, sated for a moment in his madness, sprawled on the floor of the quarry, pants still undone, "That was unexpected but not unwelcome. Missed me?"

The Tenth Doctor rests their foreheads together again, kisses him madly for one, two, five, ten seconds till the Master, who is starving again and has a void inside him, turns away, stubble rasping over his lips. It's the Master who wraps his arms around the Doctor's shoulders and head, clumsy with regeneration and bleeding life-force, and hugs him awkwardly until he stops shaking.  
  
"I want to help you," mumbles the Tenth Doctor into the filthy front of the Master's hoodie.   
  
“I want you,” the Master says. “I want you, it’s always you - “  
  
The Master drops a kiss behind his ear, pats vaguely at his hair. His breath is warm on the side of the Doctor's neck.  
  
"I'm sorry," says the Doctor. "I'm so, so-"  
  
"Don't you dare," the Master growls, and there's the sound of soldiers and helicopters and a bright white spotlight.

*** * ***   
  


**13.5**

  
  
She could do that, but instead the Doctor shrugs.  
  
“I’ve just had other things to do,” she says. “You know.”  
  
Missy leans across, kisses her gently.   
  
“Do it now,” she says, her lips brushing the Doctor’s. “I can’t make you come screaming my name until you know what y - actually, that’s a lie, I can. I could, but I won’t. I want to see you watching me, I want to see you spread out, touching yourself, wishing it was my fingers in that - “  
  
The Doctor pushes Missy down onto the bed, straddles her, kisses her hard.   
  
“I want you,” the Doctor says. “I want you, it’s always you - “  
  
“Show me.”  
  
There’s a tickling sensation at her midriff, and the Doctor realises Missy’s underdone her trousers. Missy takes the Doctor’s wrist, guides the Doctor’s hand to the Doctor’s own waistband. The Doctor shakes Missy off, slides her hand down into her pants of her own volition. She’s never been on the receiving end like this, and the warm, slick wetness that is her own body, her own cunt - it’s almost a shock. The Doctor breathes out, and smiles down at Missy as Missy smiles up at her.  
  
“You know how to work it,” Missy says, rubbing the Doctor’s waist. “The orientation is just a little different.”  
  
The Doctor slides her fingers through her own wetness, exploring herself, slowly, carefully. As she does, Missy takes the Doctor’s free hand, twists it and presses a kiss to her palm. The Doctor moves her fingers back up, gasps when she brushes over her clit. She does so again, teasing at it with her fingertips.  
  
“Let’s get these off you,” Missy says, and yanks at the Doctor’s trousers.   
  
“ _Yes_.”  
  
There’s a flurry of movement and Missy is unlacing the Doctor’s boots as the Doctor shoves her trousers down, but waits until Missy is watching to slide her pants down her thighs, over her knees. Missy yanks the Doctor’s underwear off from around her ankles, tosses them across the room.  
  
“Get back in there,” Missy says, and grins when the Doctor laughs, lies back on the bed. “Go on.”  
  
The Doctor does, rubbing at her clit; she winces when she catches it with the corner of her nail. Missy takes the opportunity to shuck the rest of her silky pyjamas, tossing them in a staticky bundle across the room. Her eyes narrow as she watches the Doctor moving on the rumpled bedclothes, her breath coming in little gasps and starts.  
  
“It’s a lot easier when you’ve done it before, even if it’s on someone else,” Missy says.  
  
The Doctor finds herself spreading across the mattress, opening her legs, twisting her head around as she touches herself, her mouth open as she gasps; Missy matches her, her lips open as she watches, her eyes bright and fascinated and fascinating. The Doctor swallows, looking up at Missy.  
  
“Kiss me,” the Doctor says.  
  
“Yes,” says Missy, and licks into the Doctor’s mouth, her fingers wrapping around the bottom of the Doctor’s jaw, the top of her throat. “Imagine, Doctor, if my tongue was in your cunt instead.”  
  
That sends a hot sudden shudder down the Doctor’s spine, and her hips sort of— flick upwards. Missy snickers against the Doctor’s cheek. The Doctor moans, slides one of her own fingers inside herself, keeps her free hand working at her clit.  
  
“Can I be of assistance?” Missy asks, lips brushing the skin just below the Doctor’s ear. “Oh, Doctor, if you could see yourself. This is the hottest thing I’ve seen in a very, very long time.”  
  
“You said you were just going to watch - “ the Doctor interrupts herself with a gasp, as she curls her finger. “Oh - “  
  
Instead of answering, Missy brushes her hand over the Doctor’s right nipple, then the left. Ripples of heat move down the Doctor’s body, pooling inside her. Missy shifts, laves her hot, wet tongue across the Doctor’s breast, and then bites. The Doctor groans, surprising herself with how loud it is, and grinds down on her clit with her palm.  
  
“God, _Missy_ \- “  
  
The Doctor’s body burns as she pumps her fingers in and out, presses on her clit; Missy sucks at the skin of her breast, and the Doctor knows there’ll be a mark and she loves that, and then -   
  
She comes. She hears herself cry out, her skin hot and her slick fingers working away at her clit even as it becomes almost painful; she feels Missy’s hot mouth and sharp teeth on her neck, and then -   
  
“Wow,” the Doctor says, and laughs.   
  
Missy laughs too, kisses the Doctor on the cheek, the corner of her mouth. The Doctor laughs against Missy’s lips, tries to kiss her - then the Doctor yelps as Missy, quick as a flash, presses down on her tender clit. It’s like a shock, pain and pleasure but just too much, too much -   
  
“Couldn’t resist,” Missy says. “Look at you, putting a show like that, all for me.”  
  
“Not all for you,” the Doctor says, still trying to get her breath back.   
  
The Doctor rolls over and kisses Missy, letting her hand slide down the soft curves of her ribs, her waist, and then up to her hip. Their thighs press together, soft, as Missy nips at the Doctor’s lip.  
  
“Doctor, Doctor, Doctor,” Missy murmurs. “Watching you.”  
  
“Mm?”  
  
Missy strokes the Doctor’s messed hair back, tugs lightly at the strands. “You know what watching you, did to me? Feeling that bright, burning heat in your body?”  
  
“You liked that?” The Doctor asks. Of course Missy did. The Master always likes to watch. “Do you want me to - um - ”  
  
“You really never can do dirty talk,” Missy says, and kisses the Doctor again. She moves, lies beside the Doctor, trails her fingertips over the swell of the Doctor’s hip. “Personally I’d like to sit on your face and ride it until I’m screaming, do you have any input? I know you’re a little out of practise.”  
  
They didn’t have sex in the Vault. It was about the imbalance; it was about the prisoner-jailer setup; it was about knowing at least one place had to remain purely a place about their pasts and their presents and futures in the platonic sense. Well, not platonic. At least, not physical. They’d played some very intense games of chess in lieu of anything physical. That had fallen apart once the Doctor and Bill had gotten stuck on Mars, and Missy had come for them (at the request of Nardole).  
  
That meant that when Missy had moved into the TARDIS proper, they’d more or less defiled every flat surface in every room numbered with a base-10 happy prime below 500 within a week. It had gotten very odd in the anti-grav room (room 139). Missy takes the Doctor’s wrist and lifts her hand to her mouth, laps at her fingers. Missy hums.  
  
“You taste great,” she says, and then nips the Doctor’s fingertip. She drops the Doctor’s hand, kisses her deeply. “What happened in room 139?” Missy asks, her lips brushing the Doctor’s.  
  
“I’d show you,” says the Doctor. “But I don’t trust you in anti-gravity right now.”  
  
They kiss again, and the Doctor moves, rolling Missy onto her back. She runs a hand down Missy’s bare torso, so familiar through new eyes, rests her fingers in the dip beside Missy’s hipbone. She presses her lips there, smiles when Missy strokes her hair back. Missy hums happily as the Doctor uses the hand on her hipbone to part Missy’s thighs. Then, the Doctor licks into Missy’s wet, hot cunt. God, her taste is so familiar, the heat, the way Missy breathes out a soft “ _oh_ ” as the Doctor laps at Missy’s swollen clit.   
  
There’s pain at the back of her head as Missy winds her fingers through the Doctor’s hair, fixes her in place. The Doctor feels herself getting wet again; she’s never minded Missy enacting a little pain when it’s like this.   
  
Unlike the way she’d touched herself earlier, the Doctor knows exactly what she’s doing here, and it’s - well, she’s not meant to say it, but it’s _ridiculously_ sexy being able to lick, and suck and bite and touch Missy without any instructions, and hear Missy’s moans, feel her shake.   
  
“Fuck, Doctor - " Missy murmurs, shifting her hips closer to the Doctor’s face. “Doctor - Doctor - "  
  
The Doctor smiles against Missy’s thigh, watches as Missy rubs her nipples, moaning. Missy reaches down clumsily, grabs the Doctor’s hair again.  
  
“More,” she says, and then meets the Doctor’s gaze. Missy grins. “ _Please_.”

  
  
*** * ***   
  


**??.?**   
  
  


It’s the most ridiculously boring faculty ball he’s had to attend so far, but next season’s will probably be worse. He’s no reason to think that, but given the evidence (last season’s faculty ball) it’s a fair assumption. Theta cut out early - he’s there alone, besides, which always makes for awkward seating arrangements - and he’s halfway towards the transport when he comes upon Ushas, who is staring up at the moonrise with a glass of Champagne.  
  
“Still dull?” she asks.  
  
“Disturbingly so,” Theta replies, not wanting to stop, lest someone else approach him. “We really do have it down to an art, don’t we?”  
  
“Mm. How is - everyone?”  
  
“Excellent, and your family?”  
  
Ushas takes a long drink. “Ingratiating, obsequious - speaking of, your brother?”  
  
Theta chuckles. “About the same. Sorry, Ushas, I must be off.”  
  
“Very well. Do say hello to Koschei for me, next time you see each other.”  
  
“I’ve not seen him for a few months,” Theta says. “But I will.”  
  
“ _Clearly_ ,” says Ushas, with a funny expression, and they both depart.  
  
It takes Theta less than ten minutes to reach the transporter, and a moment to press in the coordinates for the corner of his property; he wants a bit more of a solo walk tonight. This plan fails when he steps out of the transport and there’s a very beautiful, very short woman leaning against one of the leafy spring-fruiting trees.   
  
He doesn’t recognise her, dark skin and long, black hair pulled back into a braid.   
  
“Evening, Theta,” she says, her voice low. She smirks. "How are you?"  
  
Theta, to his credit, doesn’t drop his jaw but does drop his gaze, dragging it up and down her.  
  
“Hi,” he says. “Uh.”  
  
“You don’t recognise me?” She asks, mock innocent, mock offended. “After all these years.”  
  
“You’ve regenerated,” says Theta. “Kosch.”  
  
“Mm. I’m not surprised you didn’t hear, one of our warship’s reactors exploded, I saved the half of the warship that wasn’t being sucked into the Harmonic Particulator, and the Military High Command was very embarrassed.”  
  
“You saved half a warship?”  
  
“Well, a third,” says Koschei, and steps up so they’re chest to chest, or at least, face to chest. “They’ll need a few repairs. It’s a patch job. I don’t like being short, but I do like the new body otherwise.”  
  
“So this is your…third body,” Theta says slowly.   
  
“A pole went straight through my chest,” Koschei says, brushing her slender hand down her sternum. “I piloted that ship for fifteen minutes with a pole in my chest. With one heart working.”  
  
“That’s amazing, Kosch.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
Theta takes her shoulders; feels how slender they are now under his hands. “You’ll be out of regenerations before I’ve even finished with one.”  
  
“I guess I’ll have to finish that one, then,” Koschei says, and grins at him. “You like it?”  
  
“I always like you, Kosch, but this is something else,” says Theta. He tries to ignore how hard his hearts are pounding, the way he’s gazing at her face. The eyes are the same, at least. She’s always got beautiful eyes. “Look at you. How could I not like you? You know how I feel about you.”  
  
“Good. I’m glad.”  
  
“Great.”  
  
“Excellent.”  
  
“Capital.”  
  
“Are you going to kiss me, Theta, or do I have to climb up there myself?”  
  
“I wasn’t sure if you still liked me, if you still like men - "  
  
“I always like _you_ , Theta.”  
  
Theta takes that as permission, and kisses her; it’s been over a year since he touched Koschei and he - she, remains the most familiar, wonderful thing in the world. Koschei winds her new arms around his neck, pulls him until they’re under the shelter of her tree. Her lips travel down his neck, to the very edge of his robes, hot against his skin. Theta traces his hands down her sides, to the new swell of her hips. He cups her face, brings her lips back to his.   
  
“I want you,” Theta says. “I want you, it’s always you - "  
  
“You have me,” says Koschei. She takes one of his wrists, guides his hand to rest between her hearts. “You’ll always have me.”   
  
Theta pushes her up against the tree, drops to his knees in front of her. His hands shaking, he pushes up her tunic, tugs at the waistband of her pants. Koschei laughs, kneels to face him. She, too, begins to fumble with the front of his trousers, kissing him messily, happily. It’s been a long time since they did this.  
  
They fuck, right there on the ground beneath the tree, Koschei straddling Theta as he moves beneath her, staring in wonder at the curve of her new neck and jaw, the brightness of her eyes. She’s hot and wet and wonderful, riding his cock.   
  
“Fuck, Theta - “ Koschei says, her voice hoarse. “ _Fuck_. You feel - you’re - "  
  
She cries out, high-pitched, when she comes, and Theta has to press his hands over her wonderful mouth. She returns the favour, kissing him hard as he comes inside her, and he moans into her mouth, buries his face in her shoulder.  
  
It takes them both a little while to recover, lying under the tree, Theta stroking Koschei’s hair back as she blinks over at him in the moonslight.  
  
“Would you like to come in for dinner?” Theta asks.  
  
Koschei opens her mouth, closes it, and pulls a face. “Just a drink,” she says, finally, carefully neutral. “I don’t have an all-night pass for the base.”  
  
“Marvellous,” Theta says. “I want to spend more time with you, that’s all.”  
  
“As you should.”   
  
He stands, fixes his robes properly, helps Koschei off the ground. She dusts herself off, tosses her hair back. She takes his face in her hands, kisses him again.  
  
“I can still feel you inside me,” she whispers, and then marches off in the direction of the house.   
  
Theta takes a moment to calm down after that comment, then hurries after her, across the fields and towards his house.   
  
The servants are all probably off for the night, so he opens the door for himself and Koschei, and is blindsided by a still-awake child hurtling down the stairs.  
  
“Father!” Rewa runs across the foyer. “How was the ball? Did you see Uncle Brax?”  
  
Theta grabs Rewa under her arms, lifts her up onto his hip. “Good evening,” he says. “What are you still doing up?”  
  
“Mother said I could welcome you home,” Rewa says, and pulls a leaf out of Theta’s hair. “And then I have to go to bed, but but - did you come home through the forest?”  
  
“Yes, yes,” says Theta, and puts Rewa down quickly. “Rewa, this is an old - friend of mine, Koschei, Koschei from the Academy - "  
  
“Koschei?” asks Tilam, sweeping into the room. “Theta, who - “  
  
“Koschei, an old friend of mine from the Academy,” says Theta. “Koschei of Oakdown, my wife, Tilam, she’s - "  
  
Tilam reaches out, takes Koschei’s hand. “Yes, Koschei, your. Your friend from the Academy.”  
  
“A pleasure,” says Koschei, smiling thinly. “Theta’s told me so much about you.”  
  
“Wonderful, wonderful. About the same he’s told me of you, I’m sure. I’ll fetch Cobek, he can put something on for a late supper.”  
  
“Mother, can I - "  
  
“Rewa, I said you could stay up until your father got home, and he’s home. Off you go, my darling. One of us will come up to see you in a moment.”  
  
Within a minute, Rewa and Tilam were gone - one upstairs, one to the servant’s quarters. In the sudden, ringing silence, Theta took Koschei’s coat, brushed a couple of blades of grass off the back. He felt its weight in his hands, looked at her, keeping his expression carefully neutral.  
  
“You have a child,” Koschei says, slowly.   
  
“I thought you knew that.”  
  
“I did, I did,” says Koschei. “I do. It’s just odd to see her, in the flesh as it were.”  
  
“We both know why I went down this path, Kosch,” Theta says, and gestures towards the sitting room, watching out for Tilam’s return. “Come on through.”

  
*** * ***

  
**13.6**   
  


  
The bed shifts as Missy sits on the mattress, her hair wrapped in a towel. The Doctor watches her through half-closed eyes. Her skin is flushed pink from the shower, clashing with the yellow of her dressing gown. She reaches out, pats the Doctor’s bare ankle with her still-damp hand.  
  
“Good to see you’re still here,” the Doctor murmurs, and it’s not bitter (mostly).   
  
“Of course I’m still here,” says Missy.   
  
The Doctor rolls over, pulls the sheets over herself. “And you’re still here because-“  
  
“You’re very special to me, you made me come five times in one afternoon, you’re my ride back to Gallifrey?”  
  
Missy tugs at the sheet, grins wickedly when she catches another glimpse of the Doctor’s chest. The Doctor grabs a pillow, hugs it to herself. She sits up against the bedhead, feeling the wrought-iron press into her back. It’s cold, verges on pain (good).  
  
“I don’t know if I can take you to Gallifrey,” the Doctor says, and carefully doesn’t let her expression change. “Right away. We should go on a little trip together, first. Somewhere nice.”  
  
“It sounds like you’re going to take me out to a lake and talk about a rabbit farm,” Missy says. She unwraps her hair, starts running her fingers through her dark curls. “What did you have in mind? Cassed-Nuim? Are you allowed to get brunch there?”  
  
“Not right now,” says the Doctor.   
  
She feels bare. Exposed. Clutching the pillow, the Doctor leans off the side of the bed and finds her dressing-gown where it’s crumpled on the floor. She wriggles into that awkwardly, ignoring Missy’s stare.  
  
“I find the 21st century is a terrible place to hang about if you look female,” Missy says. “If that’s what this is about.”  
  
“Hm? Yeah. You’re probably right,” says the Doctor. “Yes.”  
  
Missy gives her another weird look. “I’ll just be going to the wardrobe, then, try and get something that has a semblance of style out of that mess.” She stands, drops her wet towel on the rumpled bed (rude. Well, the Doctor does that too, but she’s allowed. It’s her bed).  
  
“Actually,” says the Doctor. “Two bedrooms down from here, I think. You should have left a spare outfit in the cupboard in there. Shoes and all.”  
  
“Really.”  
  
“Really. You’re here a lot,” the Doctor says (like Missy had a choice). “I can’t really say any more about it.” And she really doesn’t want Missy to ask.  
  
Missy sits again, closer. She leans in, cups the Doctor’s face, kisses her gently.   
  
“What did I do to you this time?”  
  
“Oh, nothing,” the Doctor says, and runs her thumb along Missy’s lower lip. “Go get dressed; I’ll take us to Czaphis with a picnic.”  
  
“You’re going to make a picnic.”  
  
“I thought the TARDIS might, to be honest.”  
  
Something that the Doctor knew even before becoming intimately familiar with Missy’s ablutions in the Vault, was that she took ages to get ready. Of corset took her a long time (ha - should she start making more puns? Probably not). The hair and makeup along took over an hour.  
  
This gave the Doctor plenty of time to dress; to find a picnic basket with a jar of Vegemite and some stale bread inside (so the TARDIS was very unhappy then); to examine a few sets of historical TARDIS location data sets deep in the information banks; to preset them before Missy sees what her hands are doing.  
  
“It’s a lot easier when someone else ties my corset,” Missy says, sauntering into the console room. She’s perfectly made up, laced up, hair up. She’s gorgeous (she’s a long way off redemption).   
  
“I think that would have distracted me a little too much,” the Doctor says (a large too much, if she’s honest). “And I’m hungry.”  
  
“Hm.”  
  
Missy leans against the railing, watches the Doctor check the scanner. The Doctor flips a switch, shifts the main lever and takes them and the TARDIS through the timestream, straight onto a planet Missy’s never seen before and the Doctor had hoped to never see again.  
  
“How hungry?” Missy asks. “Because this ship has clearly never gotten over the whole thing with me and the Eye of Harmony, and then the paradox machine - “  
  
“Yes. Stop looking in the basket, Missy, we’ll find a restaurant.”  
  
“Fair,” says Missy, and she looks up from the picnic basket to find the Doctor standing right in front of her.  
  
The Doctor brushes her fingertips over Missy’s cheekbone. “You’re so beautiful,” she says.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
The Doctor leans in, kisses Missy gently, still holding her face. Missy kisses her back, running her hands down the curves of the Doctor’s body, squeezing her hips.  
  
“You can always trust me,” the Doctor says.   
  
Missy raises an eyebrow at that. “I don’t trust people who tell me to trust them.”  
  
“You don’t trust anyone.”  
  
“True,” says Missy. “So, lunch?”  
  
“I thought it was brunch?”  
  
“Time is meaningless but meals are important, my dear.”  
  
The Doctor grins. “After you, then,” she says, gesturing at the TARDIS doors.   
  
“Hate to see me go, love to watch me leave?” Missy says, walking towards them. “And all that?”  
  
“And then some.”  
  
The Doctor follows Missy closely as they approach the doors. Missy pulls them open, squints into the dirty grey light.   
  
“Is it winter?” she asks, and the Doctor, hating herself, pushes Missy gently in the back, just like she’s moving her along.   
  
Casual, casual. Missy lets herself step out onto the gravel outside, swivels to face the Doctor, still in the TARDIS. Missy’s face shifts, from mere suspicion, to outright horror.  
  
“Emenatori - “ she says. “Doctor, no, they’re going to - “  
  
The Doctor slams the TARDIS doors shut in Missy’s face, throws herself back into the console room. The timer on the dematerialisation circuit goes off with an anti-climatic ‘ding’ and the TARDIS begins to move in time and space, away from Emenatori, the planet of the executioners, where Missy was trying to escape from in the first place.  
  
The Doctor breathes out. She touches her cheek, and it’s dry (mostly).   
  
“Sorry,” she says, aloud, and pulls a face. She remembers the daffodils, and Cybermen, and Missy’s voice saying ‘no’ and her following the Master off to God knows where, and wonders if she really is.

*** * ***

**13.1**

First things first. The fam are all squared away; Ryan is comforting Yaz in the TARDIS, Graham is making tea for all three of them (that’s comfort, that’s British, that’s Graham). And now, she’s looking for O. She doesn’t exactly know why; he lives here, this is his patch, he knows this area. But she’d like to see him.   
  
They’re fairly sure the creatures of light aren’t coming back (how sure? Well, if hopeful is sure, she’s 100% hopeful, but only 50% sure). But O seems sure, and hey, it’s nice not to be the only genius in the room. Where was she? It’s night. The Doctor steps out of the shack, through the squeaky screen door. O is where she thought he would be, standing on the edge of yellow light spilling from the shack’s windows, where it melds into the inky blue-black of the outback, staring at the sky.  
  
“Hey, Doctor,” he says, not turning around. “Just needed some air.”  
  
“There’s air in the house,” the Doctor says. “I always say, don’t wander off, and someone always wanders off.”  
  
“Technically you’ve wandered off, to find me,” O says, and he turns and smiles at her. He’s got a nice smile, his face lit up warm from the house. “So I think we cancel each other out.”  
  
The Doctor stands beside him, breathing in the cold, fresh air of the outback.   
  
“No cloud cover,” O says, pointing. “It’ll be around 8 degrees tonight. Do you want my jacket?”  
  
She left her coat draped over Yaz, while Yaz had been on the couch in the shack. O didn’t have many spare blankets. Or any (why didn’t he?).  
  
“Nah, I’m fine,” she says. “Two hearts, lower internal body temperature. You should be asking me for my jumper.”  
  
“Can I - "  
  
“No, you’ll stretch it out,” the Doctor says, and O laughs. He’s got a nice laugh. He’s got a really nice smile. “I only have about fifteen more of these.”  
  
“Fair enough,” says O. “You know, this is in the middle of what was the original site they were going to test nuclear bombs on, back in the 50s. They changed their mind because there’s a gully nearby that would have thrown off their readings.”  
  
The Doctor shakes her head. “Humans. You love finding bigger and better ways of murdering each other.”  
  
“Yes. Sorry.”  
  
“Not you,” the Doctor says. “You - all of you, you’re special.”  
  
“You’re not so bad yourself, Doctor,” says O, turning to face her. “Don’t forget that.”  
  
The Doctor turns too, looks up at him, half in the light. “Eh,” she says. “I go alright.”  
  
“I think you’re spectacular,” says O. “Doctor?”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
He cups her face. He’s got very nice hands, rough and warm. O leans in, but the Doctor moves faster and kisses him on the lips, feeling him smile against her mouth. O makes a low noise, runs his thumbs over her cheekbones. It tingles.   
  
O is kissing her. She is kissing O. He’s warm, compared to her, compared to the night breeze, and he smells lovely, and he’s solid as she leans into him, up against him. One of his large hands rest on her waist, the other strokes her hair back. He keeps stroking her hair, even after he pulls away.  
  
“Hi,” he says, and smiles at her.   
  
“Hi,” says the Doctor, and realises she’s blushing (she doesn’t blush. She’s millennia old and she’s kissed handsome men in the Australian desert before. She’s not blushing).   
  
“I’ve wanted to do that for so long, I didn’t want to wait any longer,” says O, and there’s a funny note in his voice. “I hope it’s okay.”  
  
The Doctor touches her mouth, smiles. “Of course it’s okay,” she says. “I’ve not been kissed in this body before.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“That’s your name,” the Doctor says, and O kisses her again. 


	2. DVD commentary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a DVD Commentary, because we're in a pandemic and nothing matters any more. Written with a couple of nudges from grimorie.

**13.2**

  
First things first. **The contrast with the "13.2" at the start. To her, this is the start of this part of her internal story; we know different, we just don't know what "13.1" is yet.** She’s _not_ looking for the Master. He’s been dead before, but actually alive (Gods above, how many times has she declared him dead only to find — ) anyway. Anyway. He’s dead, but probably not. And she’s not looking for him, she’s checking he’s dead. She’s scanning space-time for him, but that’s just about being sure. It’s nice being sure. **So this ties back into when she was asked by the fam who she was looking for, the Master, but this time she's just checking his dead. And I think she kind of really is. And is, hoping. Externally.** The last time she was sure she was the last of the Time Lords -  
  
“Last of the Time Ladies,” the Doctor says aloud, quickly, and pulls a face. “Nah.” **I mean the main issue is the show was written originally by a bunch of men lbr**  
  
Funny, how Missy had happily taken the new moniker. **I really feel like Missy does weaponise her femininity and embraces the lowered expectations. I mean, at first I didn't realise she was the Master!** The Doctor’s a woman now, and she loves it, but this new body sometimes just doesn’t fit; the misses and the ma’ams and the “excuse me, young lady, WHERE are you going with those salad tongs?” just grate, over and over again. She likes her new hips and her breasts and her yellow hair, and the curves of her legs, **like this is a physical novelty to her, and I wanted her to appreciate her body in a non-sexual way, just like "this is how it is to me, and i like it,"** and then in certain times in certain planets (Earth it’s Earth, it’s Earth of course) **Something I'm trying to bring out more is when Earthlings in general just disappoint her** she sees people trailing their eyes over them and it doesn’t upset, but it wrankles. She’s taking up space. She’s always taken up space, and no one questioned it when she was a man, but - **I would really love to see them explore this indepth with the Doctor, but I also 100% get why they haven't. Like, kind of what they did in the witches episode, with her being constantly dismissed, but make it modern day. I feel like the Master could really use this to push at her with how humans aren't always tHat good. I do enjoy Jodie's performance tho and there's something weirdly inhuman about it to me (I have a very weird threshold for the uncanny valley) and it took me a while to pick it; I think there's never been a single shot where she's had to look conventionally attractive (in costuming, hair and makeup) AND the camera never objectifies her AND Jodie Whittaker is pretty but not inhumanly Hollywood gorgeous, so it has taken me a while to get used to seeing a _woman_ onscreen. This isn't a dig on Mandip/Yaz btw, it's part of her character to look more conventionally attractive and Mandip is a Stunner; further the camera rarely leers on Doctor Who. It's like the Wonder Woman film - Gadot is never objectified by the camera in the solo films (oh Justice League, I went with the most blokey "sexism and racism is over" dude ((we're no longer friends)) and HE even noticed the difference in how she was shot) but she's still an eight foot tall model in an armoured dress. I am bad at articulating these thoughts. I suppose as someone who is relatively conventionally attractive but has a similarly active face and odd mannerisms like the 13th Doctor and weird taste in clothes it's weird seeing someone who I feel resembles me so strongly? Where was I? **   
  
Where was she, apart from not looking from the Master, rather, just checking he’s dead? The Doctor checks the scanner screen. Well, he’s not in the tri-sun system of Lunarassa, at least. **Opposite motif: tri-sun area in [Luna]rassa.** The Master used to like the pan-galactic chess tournament **because chess is also a common Doctor-Master thing and also a common Magneto-Professor X thing, and they also have that old friends, new enemies vibe;** they had from the 8200s to 8776 (then came the revolution **1776/New York City** ) and Missy had certainly played a lot of chess while she was in the Vault. The Doctor shakes her head (don’t think about Missy) and flips the shields off briefly to re-scan the fifth moon of Atria-Morei (empty, not even a breathable atmosphere), and that’s when the TARDIS console explodes.  
  
(Inconvenient).   
  
The Doctor slides back across the floor, slams her shoulder against the bottom of the stairs. Sometimes it’d be nice if she was the kind of being who swore.   
  
“Ow!”  
  
Gripping her shoulder, the Doctor struggles up and runs back to the console, which steams angrily, the scanner screen flashing on and off, showing nothing but static, then black. Static, black. The Doctor slaps it with her good hand. A voice echoes through the TARDIS.  
  
“OPEN THE POD BAY DOORS, HAL.”  
  
A hideously familiar voice, and not in the 2001-A-Space-Odyssey kind of familiar. Regardless, the Doctor hurries around to the other side of the console, slams a button - the TARDIS doors swing open, and in stumbles a figure in a spacesuit, and the faceplate of said spacesuit is cracked right down the middle (old, old, usual spacesuits from this period are shatter and crack proof) but she can see blue eyes and pale skin and dark hair and -   
  
Oh, it’s 8451. Bugger. Bugger, bugger, why can’t she ever swear? Her last body at least did it occasionally. **Still not over the Malcolm Tucker-as-12 jokes tbh, I'm a simple lass.**  
  
“Hi,” says Missy, and closes the doors behind her. “Great timing, even if you’re a lot younger and - less frowny.”  
  
“You can’t be here,” the Doctor says.  
  
“Ah, but I am.”  
  
“Ah, but you can’t?”  
  
“Please, Doctor,” says Missy, and there’s a waver of desperation in her voice, because it’s 8451, and the Doctor’s one weakness (she has so many) is beautiful women asking for her help. “Get us out of here.”  
  
It’s just a quick shift; space only, no time. Missy pulls the helmet off as the Doctor lands the TARDIS on Atria-Morei, and Missy tosses her hair out, so the landing is probably a little bumpier than it could have been, because the Doctor’s always loved Missy’s hair and she’s more than a little distractable this time round. **I couldn't remember before why I named it Atria-Morei, and then I did. It's a corruption of "Memento Mori," and "atria" can also mean "courts" (not sure if that's like, tennis courts or, courting) and so it's like, "courting death" in pidgin Baby's First Latin. Unless it's in French, assume I have stuffed a phrase through Google Translate. If it is French, I stuffed it in Google Translate and then asked Yveline if it makes sense, and she makes it sound Good and Right.**  
  
The TARDIS falls silent; the Doctor’s face feels damp from the still-steaming console. Missy puts the helmet to one side, strips out of the spacesuit to reveal a dingy pair of what are probably prison fatigues; a dark blue misshapen jumper, and light grey pants made of heavy fabric, with reinforcement patches on the knees. She’s barefoot.  
  
Missy hates being barefoot. Well, Missy of the Vault did. **I feel no Time Lord likes having much flesh exposed, and being barefoot means you have to look where you're going, and having to look at the ground while you're walking is quite isolating and makes you vulnerable to outer threats.**  
  
“I like this,” says Missy, gesturing at the Doctor. “Very - gay. In both senses of the word.”  
  
“Thanks,” the Doctor says slowly. “How did you - “  
  
“Rudimentary teleport off Assaan-Buite after stealing one of the spacesuits they have sent in for repair,” Missy says. “Do you still have that room with the rotating spa bath?” **Currently working on my Masterversary BigBang and I have this joke in there too, better fix that.**  
  
The Doctor stares. Missy arches an eyebrow.   
  
“Perhaps I’ll just have a shower, then a snooze,” she says, and brushes past the Doctor, into the depths of the TARDIS and out of sight. Her footsteps echo, and then there’s nothing.  
  
The TARDIS makes a low groan, and the Doctor turns to the console as another jet of steam - nope, that’s smoke, that’s an issue - explodes out.   
  
“You couldn’t hold on for five minutes, could you?” She asks, rummaging in her pocket for her goggles. “Let’s just do a patch.”  
  
Perhaps it’s a good thing. The TARDIS warms up around her as she finds the culprit - the one of the coolant pipes has cracked, and is dripping into the lead-lined tea kettle that usually serves as a handy storage area for radon-infused spark plugs. **I love how they've brought out 13 as an inventor, and she really is one of those people who just has a messy messy shed where they know where everything is, and everything's a bit greasy and black but she knows what she's doing and has so many uses for old junk. I love her.**  
  
“It’s a patch job,” the Doctor says, and hums to the TARDIS as she works, pretending she’s forgotten, and the TARDIS decides to pretend too. **I am feeling a complexity to the TARDIS relationship to the Master** **has developed because I feel like. The TARDIS.** **Knew Missy had changed, so it's willing to sort of. Be chill. Which also explains why the TARDIS didn't respond when O got inside it. Also, the Doctor loves the TARDIS; I'm always thinking about their reunion in The Ghost Monument tbh. I wish we saw a bit more of that in casual moments with the Doctor, as opposed to just when there's been Drama.  
**

*** * ***

**10.1 - I was going to put in an introductory note about these, but then I didn't. I'm not here to hold your hand. That said, these are formatted right-justified because they're ~back in time~ and the day I figure out how to format two columns on Ao3 will be a Very Exciting one indeed because I have PLANS  
**

  
In the seconds after the war ended, after Gallifrey, the Doctor had convulsed and cried and writhed on the floor when the planet was gone, an emptiness screaming in his skull. For the longest time, Gallifrey had seemed like a deadweight holding him down. He was wrong. The war was a deadweight. Gallifrey was Gallifrey was Gallifrey, was gravity and the ground and the colour and the concept of red, you didn't think about it until you needed it and then you couldn't survive without it. 

He'd always thought, in his youth, of Gallifrey as an anchor, dragging him down from the world of air and light and potential and wonder (up where they walk, up where they run). **Why the FUCK did I put that in there.** Gallifrey was the pivot around which he swung, the sun at the centre of the universe. Its presence kept his timeline straight, kept the moons in orbit, the shining jewel of the seven systems.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry" he sobs into the floor, hands gripping at his new skull, short buzzed hair, big ears, and he's all alone in the universe for the first time and he's got what he's always wanted and all it cost him was everything. **I went back and forth on separating this into a separate "9.1" thing, but these are all the "firsts" of the Doctor and the Master (primarily in the new series) and I felt it just ran smoothly. And this is the first time they were alone in the universe together (not that either of them knew that at the time).**

When the Master returned, for the first time, in the mind of Professor Yana, in the guise of Harold Saxon, the Doctor had known. Of course. Who else could it be?

Saxon would barely look him, because when their skin touched, the last two Time Lords in creation, it felt like a comet hitting the earth. Without Gallifrey as the centrepoint, they were revolving around each other, spinning out of control with no one left to guide them. The Doctor cried when he died, the empty silence in his head screaming out with nothing but the spaces between stars hearing- **As I have said before, it's like with RTD's Master, he was an apocalyptic, world-ending threat every time he showed up, and so he HAD to die each time, while Missy did hit that sweet spot of "we know she's evil" but not so apocalyptic that she has to be absolutely 100% dead at the end of an episode (well Simm was never 100% dead but like, he was wholly "done" if that makes sense). And in the Tennant era that works because being "the last" is such a big part of his character and arc, and that's what I've tried to reflect here.**

**Also the idea of opposites comes up again with the spaces between stars. Well, that counts to me.**

  
  
*** * ***

**13.3**

She gives up on scanning for the latest, feral, **I do love everyone calling the new Master "feral" bc it has a different second meaning in Australia, which still works for him** enraged version of the Master. At her worst, Missy is cutting rather than, well, a successful genocidaire. The woman of the hour is easy to find, lolling across a chaise longue in the blue library, fast asleep in silky pyjamas, all tucked up under under a knitted throw. She’s also found a goose-down pillow from somewhere. An empty teacup sits on the coffee table, a ring of tea around the bottom. **Maybe I shouldn't have made Missy so "at home" in the TARDIS because this point is like...before the execution, but perhaps the TARDIS made it easier for her?**  
  
The Doctor pauses in the doorway, watches Missy roll over onto her stomach. Quietly, carefully, the Doctor leans against the doorframe, touches the brass faceplate with her fingertips. **She's trying to ground herself.**  
  
“You’ve made this very easy,” she murmurs to the TARDIS. “You want her out of here quickly, hm?” **I mean, perhaps, but the Doctor could be misreading the TARDIS's intentions.**  
  
The TARDIS is quiet, and the Doctor feels judged. Still, she crosses the room and kneels down beside Missy, stares at her face, trying to pick where they’re at in her timeline. **Kneeling willingly beside the Master.** Not that much can be told from a face. She’s not just watching Missy sleep (that was something only her previous self did, and only in the Vault). That would be wrong, and impractical, and she’s nothing but dispassionate and removed when it comes to the Master now. **This is meant to be like, "I don't even care any more. I just don't care. How are they, anyway? Not that I care. But they're doing okay?"** She - he - the Master, killed their people. Their people are dead. Again. There’s no mercy here, no sentiment, just an unwelcomingly familiar face and presence on one of her chairs.   
  
Missy’s dark hair curls along the pillow like spilled dark matter, lipstick smeared on the pillow like old blood. **~the drama of it all~** Should she start wearing lipstick? The Doctor touches her own mouth. Nah. She tried eyeliner that one time Yaz offered, **I mean, Ya likes makeup, and the Doctor did like being hennaed during Demons of the Punjab,** and who knew how many times you could rub your eyes before Ryan took you to one side and told you that you looked like a panda? **I love Ryan, but I've not figured him out yet. But he's nice. He would do this for someone, he knows how it feels to stand out unwillingly in public.**  
  
It’s not that she doesn’t like pandas; pandas are fine. They just don’t tend to do much, and she’s always been a do-something kind of person. Out of the ursidae family she’s probably more of a spectacled bear than anything else; she does have a wide and varied diet, and they like to get out and about in nature, and the tree climbing aspect is certainly a bonus. She’s not a fan of water this time around, can’t see herself living with otters this time around. **I read a lot about bears when I was writing this. I love Americans. "Australia's animals are so scary!" Um, stay away from long grass, wear shoes and wear gloves if you're reaching somewhere where you can't see your hand, and you'll be fine 90% of the time (the other 10% is kangaroos). North America has fucking BEARS. And MOOSE. No antidote for a fucking bear.**  
  
She’s certainly not a koala (oh, please don’t call me a koala bear/cause I’m not a bear at **all/[this is a kid's song, it slaps, I've linked this and now I'm listening to it all the way through](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB2y52jfRdc))** though she did have a form of chlamidiya a few bodies back - how did she catch that again? **Koalas have a unique strain of chlamidiya. Donate to save these ridiculous, bad-tasting animals[here](https://donate.wwf.org.au/donate/2019-trees-appeal-koala-crisis).** She’s fairly certain Jack had something to do with it, or River. Medicines might be constantly improving, but bacteria evolves faster, no matter where or when or how you go. **This is very true, as we have VERY clearly seen recently. Is chlamidiya a virus or a...anyway.** Perhaps a sun bear? Sun bears are quite short. She’s short, this time. Still taller than Missy though (lest said about Missy’s next self, the better, and even less thought, best) **(it's not like she cares or anything, because she doesn't!!!!!! She just wants to be sure he's dead. Totally)** , which would count for more if it was more than a couple of inches.   
  
Missy rolls over in her sleep, flat on her back, one hand curled into a loose fist on the pillow. Forgetting about bears (mostly - perhaps they should go to the Hundred-Acre Wood when she picks the fam back up) the Doctor leans across and trails her fingertips up the blue veins of Missy’s wrist, the bump at the end of her radius, up the soft skin, up to her pinky. **This is tender, and I wonder if they did this to each other in the Vault. I think so. The Doctor falls back into those habits a couple of times in this story.** Missy’s hand relaxes, unfurls. She should stop herself, but instead the Doctor leans across, presses a kiss to the centre of Missy’s palm, closing her eyes. Missy’s fingers are warm when she brushes them against the Doctor’s cheek. **It's about opening up, gently, taking up space, trusting.** The Doctor leans back, sits on the floor crosslegged. Missy rolls onto her side, faces her properly.  
  
“You’ve gone soft in your old age,” Missy says. “Not that I’m averse to that, but what's this about?”  
  
“When are we?” The Doctor asks, and all of a sudden she’s sad about River too, **it's not that I'm not interested in River, but just the way her story was portrayed (so sexual) and slapped together makes me less invested and not want to revisit it in fic, in detail. From what I've heard, Bernice Summerfield is just the best version of that, bc the audios can just do more Adult stuff without it being Steven Moffat writing it,** not just Missy and the Vault and how - well, she (the Doctor) failed. **Two failures, really -** She fell for Missy, and she fell for Missy’s lie about trying to be good, trying to get better, and everything they’d shared across the ninety-odd years in the Vault —“When did you last see me?”  
  
“You’re a silver fox with a guitar, and you left me to die on Skaro,” Missy says. “A few months ago, we texted. Just a check-in; you were talking about Zygon sleeper agents on Earth, I couldn’t bring myself to care.” **This is meant to slap the timeline right in place if anyone cares about that (it's Doctor Who I mean come on).**  
  
The Doctor looks at Missy’s hand again, at the worn-down nails, the bruises against her knuckles. **So this is meant to emphasise to us that Missy's been in a fucked up situation, she usually has great nails and clean skin. She's been fighting and clawing.** She misses River, River, with all her curls and her kindness and fierceness. Focus on River. River, who wrote to her (way back when) and said good was _only good_ in the darkest hour, the deepest pit - who’d inspired her to take Missy’s word and - **River and the Doctor were good for each other. The Doctor and the Master _can_ be good for each other, but it doesn't mean they _are_.**  
  
“And when did you last see me?”  
  
About to die on Gallifrey with silvered skin and a broken soul and shattered hearts. **Q proud of that line.** “Uh, I think we - you’ve regenerated, unfortunately - we, we we - "  
  
“Oh this one’s a bad liar too,” says Missy, and trails her bruised hand across the Doctor’s cheekbone. “Well.” Missy sits up, studies the Doctor’s face. “Why do you look so sad, my dear? You’ve wanted to be a woman for decades.”  
  
“Yes, but it didn’t mean I’d constantly go around beaming about it once it happened,” the Doctor snaps, and Missy grins.   
  
“Have we had a fight or something?”  
  
The ‘we’ Missy uses is Gallifreyan; an informal collective pronoun that means ‘you currently, and a future version of myself.’ It’s an unsubtle way of reminding the Doctor that Missy’s not responsible for the Master’s latest mistakes. Still. (Still). **I mean, this is accidental hypocrisy because the Master later, is furious the Doctor was the Timeless Child/and is also furious she was tortured, but the Doctor didn't know! So the Master has no reason to be angry with her. And he's not like. Fully angry with her, but the O thing was Such a dick move, because he felt betrayed. I'm tired. Where was I?**  
  
“Where did you just escape from?”  
  
“Why don’t you guess?”  
  
“Uh - “ the Doctor lets her eyes trail down Missy’s form. “Well, prison.”  
  
“They were about to ship me off to Emenatori, Doctor dear,” Missy says. “Planet of the Executioners, not that you care.” **And so, Emenatori is another corruption of "memento mori." I figured the planets were near each other, so they have related-sounding names. I couldn't find a note about what the planet was called, so...I probably didn't look hard enough.**  
  
Oh. So Missy’s mere months away from seemingly being put to death at the Doctor’s own hands. Everything is about to change for them–well, take on the resemblance of change. The only thing that’s changed, it seems, has been the Doctor’s gullibility. She doesn’t let herself think of Missy at the end, her eyes cold, staring through her as she begged for her to stand alongside her, just once, once, once (like they’d always wanted). **Michelle Gomez's acting when she tells the Doctor she's not staying...........magnificent. Truly. The eyes. The scoff. The eyes.**  
  
“You tend not to stay dead.” Except this time (hopefully).   
  
Missy winks at the Doctor. “True.”  
  
“True.”  
  
“We’ve had a fight,” Missy says. “You and I.” Missy reaches across, trails those bruised knuckles down the Doctor’s cheek. **Always reminding of the bruises, of the Master's fallibility and fragility, and how we'll later see her vulnerability in the Vault.** “Did I hurt you, or did you just expect too much?” She studied the Doctor’s face. “You expect so much from everyone, and you’re always hurt when they let you down. Expect the worst, my dear. Then you’re only ever pleasantly surprised.”  
  
The Doctor doesn’t let herself lean into Missy’s touch (okay, perhaps a little). She turns her head, presses her lips to the bruises on Missy’s knuckles. Missy smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes, and the Doctor suddenly remembers the last time she saw Missy smiling like that, and she can smell the diesel of Cybermen, the smoke of the Master’s cigars lingering on his clothes, the cool scent of daffodils and see Missy’s eyes with tears but this Missy’s eyes are dry, calculating, uncompromising (and in a way, marvellously, _spectacularly_ uncomplicated). **Spectacular = Simm!Master to me. Always always always, I feel like the same people tend to read these so I'm sure y'all noticed that already. This is also a little waver to "Maybe Missy did change?" because she remembers Missy having tears in her eyes, and her eyes are dry now. But the Doctor hasn't realised that; she's observed it but didn't turn it around in her mind and wonder why, because it's too painful.**  
  
“I’ve missed you,” the Doctor says, and leans down and kisses her.   
  
Missy’s lips are warm, and soft, and familiar, and Missy chuckles darkly into her mouth. **If they don't chuckle darkly at least once, are they even the Master?** Kissing is good, she remembers kissing. She always means to do more kissing and then never does. Missy sits, pressing their mouths together, moving her hand from the Doctor’s face to curling her fingers through the Doctor’s hair, pulling lightly. Missy pulls back, studies the Doctor’s face closely, her blue eyes narrowing.  
  
“Two in a row,” Missy murmurs, kissing the Doctor again.   
  
It takes the Doctor a minute to place the comment, and then she remembers, so many years ago, a room of skeletons and blue light and Missy’s lithe form pressing her up against a wall, and - **I was gonna write this, but then there's a great amount of 12-and-Missy-fucking-against-a-wall fics and why should I try and improve upon their perfection?**  
  
“Bit presumptuous,” the Doctor says, pulling away. She sits crosslegged on the floor again, raises her eyebrows at Missy. “For all you know, I could’ve shagged my way through over half the galaxy by now.” Ah, she’s missed an opportunity there (sixty-nine percent of the galaxy, perhaps). **I forgot I put that in. #nice**  
  
“Since when do you shag your way through the galaxy?” Missy asks. “Since when do either of us?” **I have waxed rhapsodic on this before, and I will again! I just don't think the Master is interested in sex or being with anyone who isn't the Doctor. They've got a single-target sexuality.**

 **I saw a gifset the other day that was like a..."he treats me bad but I love him" gangster's girlfriend vibe with Lucy Saxon and Simm!Master and I was like. Fucking Bye. Yeah, we saw Simm with beautiful women giving him ""massages"" and using Lucy but that's like. Part of his charade. He needed a pretty blonde wife to be Prime Minister, and he wanted a toy, to fuck around with the Doctor's head. He's like a cat, teasing something for as long as possible until it fucking dies. Simm!Master was a misogynist (and so was Jacobi too.....RTD why would an alien from a non-Earth planet be sexist? Eh it was 2008). (Was it 2008? Anyway). But as the Master's regenerated, I just feel like. We don't see them exhibit a single bit of interest in anyone else. And I don't like the promiscuous evil person trope. It's just not my tempo. That was less rhapsodic than ramblings but anyway.**  
  
The Doctor’s about to reply to that, but she finds Missy kissing her again, Missy sliding off the chaise into her lap, Missy soft and silky-warm and pressing up against her, and -   
“I do have to ask, my dear,” Missy says, kissing down the Doctor’s neck, and it feels like ice-hot silver on her skin, “If you’d mind dropping me off somewhere in the vicinity of Gallifrey. When we’re finished off.”  
  
Women’s lips are softer. Women’s skin is softer. Soft on soft, curves on curves, oscillating. Missy tugs at the hem of the Doctor’s collar, brushes her lips along the Doctor’s clavicle. **Everything Missy arrived in (the spacesuit, the prison clothes) were quite hard wearing and rough, and now, in contrast, she's all wool and silk and softness.**  
  
“Mrs Robinson, are you trying to seduce me for a ride home?” says the Doctor unthinkingly, not letting her brain think about Gallifrey, or anything in the vicinity thereof. “Or in the vicinity thereof?”  
  
Missy laughs, breath ghosting over the Doctor’s shoulder. “I suppose you get points for trying, my dear. I’d fuck you either way, Doctor. You’re the only thing in the galaxy worth waking up next to.” **I have waxed rhapsodic on this before, and....but also, I feel like "waking up next to" has a different energy to just saying she wants a shag. There is always something vulnerable in sleep.** She kisses the Doctor, on the mouth this time, long and slow and soft. “But you’ll need to drop me home so I can pick myself out a new TARDIS. I blew up my vortex manipulator escaping Skaro, so you know. Home to Gallifrey, grab a TARDIS, exact a wee bit of revenge on Skaro, then - Doctor, what is that face?” Missy pouts, in mocking reflection.  
  
“Don’t look sad, of course I’m going to blow Skaro to tiny little insy-bitsy pieces **so it's "incy-wincy" or "itsy-bitsy" but Missy doesn't know the correct phrase because she doesn't spend as much time around humans as the Doctor, and mixes it up.**. You know what they did to us.” **The Doctor's sad because she knows that same revenge will be enacted upon Gallifrey, at some point in the Master's future, and the Doctor's past.**  
  
“I’ve never known you to be so loyal,” says the Doctor slowly, refusing to let herself think any further than the next sentence. “To our - to the Time Lords.” **And this is like, my little nod to her being like. I suppose I'm not really...a Time Lord. Hence, our, then the.**  
  
“I know what they did to you, to us,” **IRONY, AS SHE DOES NOT!!!!!** Missy says. She runs her thumb along the Doctor’s lower lip, the pressure increasing as she moves slowly from one side to the other. **This is control, a controlling move. She's holding the Doctor's face and interfering with it. It comes back later.** “Resurrected me to be the perfect warrior, forced you into fighting — and that’s just during the Time War.”  
  
There’s more kissing. The Doctor isn’t sure who starts it, but she ends up lying on the floor, Missy on top of her, pressing her back into the plush rug, kissing her gently, teasing at the bottom of her top, the waistband of her trousers. Kissing is more than enough, flooding her body with waves of heat. Kissing is great. Occasionally Missy’s bare fingers brush the Doctor’s bare waist, and it’s like sparks along her spine.   
  
“This is your first time in this body?” Missy whispers, lips against the Doctor’s ear. Now that makes the Doctor gasp, press her thighs together. “I’ll take that as a yes.”  
  
“Y-yes, It’s a yes,” the Doctor mumbles, with a sudden throb of nerves. She takes Missy’s face in her hand, moving her mouth back to hers. “You’re so gorgeous. That never changes. So - so sexy.”  
  
This body hasn’t said sexy before. It probably won’t again.   
  
“Sexy,” says the Doctor, and pulls a face. **I cannot take anyone doing dirty talk seriously. Which is funny, because once I wrote an entire fanfic of just dirty talk. But every time a man has tried to talk dirty to me/sext me it's been like "are you done? You think you're good at this? Okay. Okay."**  
  
Missy laughs against her mouth, bites the Doctor’s bottom lip. “You’re a lot less overeager this time. The first time we fucked in your last body, I thought you’d break me in half.”  
  
Again, she’s overwhelmed by the (a) memory; Missy and her, in the graveyard of walking skeletons in metal cages; hours later, Missy and her, pressed together against the TARDIS console, sweating and gasping for air. **Was gonna write that scene for the next bit, did not, for two reasons. 1. I wanted the "main" scene between 13 and Missy to hit harder and 2. I wanted the sex scene between Koschei and Theta to hit even HARDER, so I was like "ah no one will expect a sex scene inside a flashback inside a porn fic. And yet, there it was. Was anyone surprised? I'm getting ahead of myself.  
**

*** * ***

**12.1**

  
  
She wakes up a number of hours later, the TARDIS on its early morning cycle, mostly buried under the duvet and delightfully warm and peaceful. She slowly becomes aware of the Doctor sleeping behind her, nose in her hair, warm breath on the back of her neck, one hand resting on the curve of her waist. She wriggles backwards until his chest is flush with her back, tangles their legs together and feels his heartsrate increase with every movement. Finally, she links her fingers in with his, waits for him to relax. **Also, third reason. [Ben Wyatt voice] It's about the tenderness.**  
  
"Do we really disgust you that much?" she asks.  
  
“No. You never disgust me. I want you, always you - ”  
  
“Explain the tension, then.”  
  
There's the sensation of movement, of yielding and calming behind her and the Doctor kisses the back of her neck. **Necks are sexy for Time Lords etc etc etc.** It takes a moment for him to speak.  
  
“No Time Lords, no Gallifrey, for so long, it's like I was knocked out of orbit. **This orbit line ties back to the earlier scene with 10.** I had no grounding presence. I had to make my own. You felt it too, didn't you?" he waits, she says nothing. "That's why you barely laid a hand on me when we were on the Valiant, because you could feel it; that sensation of touching the only other living reminder of a non-existent planet."  
  
"Like getting off a sailing ship in a storm and being on the steady ground for the first time," she says. "Only a thousand times worse."   
  
The Doctor moves his hand across her stomach and splays his fingers out like iron bars, **like he's imprisoning her,** pulling her closer to him. His thumb skims the underside of her breast.   
  
"You seem to be getting used to it."  
  
"I missed you," he says, right in her ear.  
  
Her stomach flutters. _Traitor_. **So this is Missy's POV, for this one word. I wanted it to be like. Missy was on the path to being, a little tiny bit good, long before her personal lockdown. Oh God. 2020. Fuck this has been the longest and shortest year in history. I need a drink but it messes with my medication.  
**

*** * ***

**13.4**

The Doctor trails her hands up Missy’s thighs, pulls a face. “I don’t like silk,” she says. “It feels slimy.” **it does!!!**  
  
Missy sits back so she’s straddling the Doctor’s waist, grins down at her. “You know, a better line would be something like, ‘these trousers would look better on my bedroom floor.’”  
“Not used to you in trousers. You never wear trousers,” says the Doctor. “Even when I brought them to you.” **The Doctor is not a good liar. And not a good pretender. They just think they are.**  
  
Humming, Missy begins to shift, rubbing against the Doctor. Even through all their layers, the Doctor can feel how warm Missy is, belying her excitement. Then, Missy pauses, catches the Doctor’s wrist. Her fingers are strong, tight, tense, **the 13th Doctor is a lesbian,** and then they loosen, pressing against the Doctor’s pulse point.  
  
“When do you ever bring me trousers, my love?” Missy asks. She looks down at the Doctor, brushes a strand of hair off of the Doctor’s forehead. “What happens, with us?” she asks. “Why are you sad, my dear?” **All these little platitudes. Missy wants this info out of her. My love, us, my dear? It's both true and manipulative. Right now Missy and 12 are in the "best enemies who occasionally fuck and enjoy each other's company on the DL" sweet spot (in my personal headcanon), and Missy digs it. So she is worried. What happens? Something does always happen.**  
  
“I’m not sad,” the Doctor lies. “I’m a little ticked off. We’re - “ Missy’s hand twists on her wrist. **And then, the reminder of violence between them. Missy's got the Doctor flat on her back in a very vulnerable spot, remember.** “We’re together, right now, we’ve just had a fight and you’ve gone off. Um, anyway. You just don’t like trousers this time around, do you?”  
  
Missy leans back, narrows those ice-chip eyes. **Ice, because she's a stone cold biiiiiiiitch.** “You know your wife. The latest one.”  
  
“Yes, intimately. Or, I did.” **Humour, to try and break tension. It doesn't work/**  
  
“Well, I could hear you thinking of her. All that - _the Doctor lies, rule one,_ nonsense she used to spout. **Not gonna lie. HATED that shit. "He doesn't like endings." Fuck off and show us that in the show, don't slap it in during the end of Amy and Rory's arc. [breathes out] the lighting was very good during that era of the show.** She never tacked onto the end of the rule, ‘ _the Doctor always lies. They’re a shitty liar, though, so you can always tell._ ’” Missy strokes the Doctor’s cheek again. “I suppose she never knew you the way I know you. The way I knew you.” Missy leans in, kisses the Doctor gently. Oddly chaste. “I’ll always know you.” **And then, suck it Missy, this is BLOWN out of the water because after the Timeless Child reveal, the Master thinks they don't Know the Doctor any more.**  
  
The Doctor breathes out. It’s shaky. Her chest feels hot and tight; her hearts thrum in her ears. She lets her hands trail down Missy’s sides, fiddle with the silky waistband of her silky pyjama trousers. **Silky, silky, repetition when the 13th Doctor uses it...I think it's when she's trying to ground herself, distract herself. What can you feel, what can you hear, what can you see?**  
  
“Anyway. I’m just desperate for you to get me out of these,” Missy says, and the Doctor laughs beneath her. “Let’s go to bed. I love being your first. I’m always your first. When it counts, anyway.”  
  
“When has it not counted?” The Doctor asks.  
  
“When I’ve not been the first.” **I read a lot of articles by poly people when I'm thinking about this aspect of their relationship; not that they're poly. It's sort of like a left-turn, mirror universe version of a healthy open relationship, but it's not an open relationship. If the Doctor is Missy's be-all, end-all romance/sex wise, what do the others matter? What does River matter, Rose, Romana, and all the others? They'll die eventually, and the Master will still be there. To the Master, it just _doesn't count_ , when it's not her. Is that cognitive dissonance? I had a cognition once. **  
  
Missy shifts off of the Doctor, stands, and the Doctor stands after her. Almost nose to nose, the Doctor kisses Missy gently. Smiling into her mouth, Missy snakes her arms around the Doctor’s waist, presses herself against her. Everything’s warm, a bit too silky.  
  
“We’re together in the future?” Missy asks, a strange note in her voice. **The note is hope.**  
  
“After a fashion,” says the Doctor, because that’s true (it’s true enough).   
  
(Aren’t they always?)  
  
There’s more kissing, and a vague attempt to shuffle towards the Doctor’s bedroom; that leads to them falling backwards onto the chaise and laughing, and more kissing, and Missy somehow denudes the Doctor of her coat before they can get back up again. **I've found with undressing the 13th Doctor, the coat PLUS suspenders are just. An obstacle. You have to get rid of one as soon as possible.** Missy tugs down the edge of the Doctor’s top, licks along her clavicle again. **Not to be super narcissistic, but I just have a great collarbone and I find it to be a very interesting bone, and it's sexy and fragile and vulnerable, and I just have a really good collarbone.** She blows cool air along her path, raising the hairs on the Doctor’s skin. The Doctor shivers, and Missy chuckles. **Shivers can be cold, pleasure....or fear. I mean, here it's pleasure but you know.**  
  
“You’re gorgeous,” Missy says, kisses the dip in her collarbones. “Let me take you to bed.”  
  
The Doctor surprises herself, laughing. “We’re trying to get there.”  
  
She takes Missy’s hand, laces their fingers together, and Missy trails after her, out of the library, down corridors and up stairs, and they get to the door of where the Doctor has been sleeping, and Missy presses the Doctor into the door, kisses her messily as the Doctor fumbles for the doorhandle, the doorframe pressing a blunt angle into her back. **In hindsight this sentence is way too long.** Missy yanks the Doctor’s suspenders down off her shoulders, and that just makes the handle more complicated. **And so here, I decided to embrace the complexity of the stupid suspenders. At least with Missy she can just lift her skirt up. She's thoughtful like that.**  
  
“How does this work?” The Doctor asks, and Missy bites her neck. “Oh, God, Missy - "  
  
Missy drops to her knees in front of the Doctor, which short-circuits something in the Doctor’s brain **(she's not meant to do that!! She's meant to kneel! And it also comes back to the Vault bc of the power dynamics and blowjobs or something, I had something more insightful planned for here and it's gone, but the Master rarely kneels before the Dcotor, but really it's just like her brain being like "BLOWJOB???? NO THAT WON'T WORK....MISSY'S GONNA EAT ME OUT???!!!!!!!" like I do wish I'd meant more about dynamics here but it is just pure horniness)** and she forgets how to talk, but at least she somehow deals with the doorhandle (did she break it?) **I like to think she did**. The Doctor stumbles backwards and falls onto the bed, and Missy is on top of her within seconds, slipping a hand up her shirt -   
  
“You’re so fast - “  
  
“I want you,” Missy murmurs, pulling up the Doctor’s top up. “You don’t wear a bra? Oh, my dear, you’ll regret that in a couple of years - “ **I rarely wore bras before lockdown and now Very rarely do, and people always say this to me, but you know what? Fuck off. It's always cis women saying it too. Did you enforce it? Did you enforce the patriarchal standards of beauty? I also have quite small boobs so I don't have most of the issues a lot of women have with going braless. That SAID:**  
  
“Structured support in the top,” the Doctor says.  
  
Missy pauses for a moment. “Hm,” she says.   
  
“I do love the corsets though,” the Doctor says, remembering what Missy usually wears under her clothes, and want suddenly throbs through her like a sun flare. “Oh, God, Missy, I loved the corsets - " **[nods] one day I'll write the fic. One day.**  
  
“I don’t have one on right now, silly,” says Missy. She pokes the Doctor in the nose. “You do, don’t you? Your Mistress all laced up tight?” **Missy saying the Mistress is always good.**  
  
The Doctor covers her mouth to stop herself moaning, and nods. She shifts, feels how wet she is, her shaking thighs, the tightness in her chest. Missy flicks her thumb over her nipple, pinches, and grins when the Doctor whimpers. **So this is partially her getting Super turned on but it's also. A lot, very fast. It's too much, and we're about to see that.**  
  
“Can I - " the Doctor says and swallows. Missy keeps playing with her nipple, licking at the Doctor’s neck, breath hot on the Doctor’s burning skin. “Um, Missy - "

“ _Doctor_.” **This is meant to show that Missy is....not paying attention to the Doctor's emotions right now.**  
  
“Missy, can you just - “ The Doctor tries to swallow again. “Actually, Missy.”  
  
Missy stops, rolls off of the Doctor, turns on the rumpled bedclothes to face her. “My dear?”  
  
“It’s my first time.”  
  
“Yes, I know.”  
  
“No,” says the Doctor. She sits up, pulling her top back down. She breathes out, sucks a breath in. “First time anything in this body. First time - well, no I hugged Yaz’s mum.”  
  
“And who’s Yaz when she’s at home?”  
  
“She’s a mate, she’s brilliant.”  
  
“Hm,” says Missy. “You know the first thing I did when I was settled into this body was figure out how the hair worked, whether it bites its nails and then hopped in bed with a lot of lube and exciting rubbery things that go ‘buzz.’” She pauses, thinks. “I mean, I definitely had other things to do, but that regeneration is a little hazy. **Because of Simm! and the Cybermen etc etc. In my head, there's like two versions of the Simm!Master, like he split apart when he went to go kill Rassilon....that's a whole other conversation. Anyway.** I always do that. You’ve got to know the body, my dear.”  
  
“I never have time to - “ the Doctor rolls her eyes. “ _Know the body_.” **It's such a wanky phrase I knew I had to mock it once I'd come up with it.**  
  
“You have to know the body, so you can control it. So you’re not a slave to its urges, its sad little wants and needs.” **She said, basically humping the Doctor.**  
  
She could point out that oftentimes **ooh, oftentimes. Fancy!** she doesn’t have time to “know the body” because she’s too busy trying to sort out whatever mess her regenerating self has fallen into or created or is escaping, and more than once she’s been regenerating because of Missy’s actions. **So the original prompt asked for it to be the Doctor's first time "exploring" her body and honestly I didn't quite align with that because like. The Doctor's not a particularly sexual being (she said, in the middle of a fanfic about her having sex) but i still feel like she'd do a bit of fiddling about because she's an explorer, she's a scientist, and she's probably got a great collection of exciting things that go buzz. But hey, it was interesting to challenge myself with the prompt.**

 **That said, [assault CW] it brought up some Stuff for me which is probably why this goes on to be less explicit than I would usually go - I really don't like to discuss this in detail but I was manipulated by a person in a position of power when I was in my mid-teens so I was sort of pushed more into emotional places/concepts where I wasn't comfortable/emotionally ready (I was 16, the person was in their 50s) but I didn't know/accept that at the time. Some have called it grooming, which it was....but I'm not ready to say that yet, if that makes sense. Anyway.** **I've put this here to explain this part of the story, but would appreciate no questions/speculation about it in comments/anywhere else, thanks. I'm in a safe place with lots of good people around me and it was a decade ago (WOAH).  
**

**Along with a couple of other more recent events, that's why this bit went a bit skewed and is a bit more veiled than I might usually do with a porny fic.  
**

  
*** * ***

  
**10.2**   
  


  
When the Master returned for the second time, because who else could it be, the Doctor's chest swelled and his hearts stuttered and the emptiness was gone gone gone.

"That," said the Master, sated for a moment in his madness, sprawled on the floor of the quarry, pants still undone, **a little nod to the common fics around then about them fucking in the quarry, it was a time. Ah, 2010. Wow, that was a decade ago too. I need a drink. I've given up drinking.** "That was unexpected but not unwelcome. Missed me?"

The Tenth Doctor rests their foreheads together again, kisses him madly for one, two, five, ten seconds till the Master, who is starving again and has a void inside him, turns away, stubble rasping over his lips. It's the Master who wraps his arms around the Doctor's shoulders and head, clumsy with regeneration and bleeding life-force, and hugs him awkwardly until he stops shaking. **As dumb as some bits of Simm!Master's schtick was in the Christmas specials (god when he eats the fucking turkey..........christ............RTD Era was just a time, but they WENT FOR IT and for that I will always love it) he was so....feral (in the secondary Australian version of the word) and animalistic and I wanted to get that across with like. He can't even hug properly, he's so fucked up.**  
  
"I want to help you," mumbles the Tenth Doctor **I should have cut the "tenth" bc we know who it is from context. Too late now.** into the filthy front of the Master's hoodie.   
  
“I want you,” the Master says. “I want you, it’s always you - “ **So this might as well happen here. A variation on "I want you, I want you, it's always you" happens about half a dozen times in this fic, shared between the Doctor and the Master. Because want implies choice, and a decision. I want this, so I'm going after it. Need is too vulnerable. And, "it's always you." Because who else could it be? Who else would escape the Time War? Who else would try to turn good? Who else would destroy their people in revenge and anger?**  
  
The Master drops a kiss behind his ear, pats vaguely at his hair. **Can't even pat hair properly, the FOOL.** His breath is warm on the side of the Doctor's neck.  
  
"I'm sorry," says the Doctor. "I'm so, so-"  
  
"Don't you dare," the Master growls, and there's the sound of soldiers and helicopters and a bright white spotlight. **Someone called this foreshadowing, it's actually a special industry technique called "accidental foreshadowing."**

*** * ***   
  


**13.5**

  
  
She could do that, but instead the Doctor shrugs.  
  
“I’ve just had other things to do,” she says. “You know.”  
  
Missy leans across, kisses her gently.   
  
“Do it now,” she says, her lips brushing the Doctor’s. “I can’t make you come screaming my name until you know what y - actually, that’s a lie, I can. I could, but I won’t. **I thought about it going like this, but didn't want to take away 13's agency in exploring her sexuality.** I want to see you watching me, I want to see you spread out, touching yourself, wishing it was my fingers in that - “  
  
The Doctor pushes Missy down onto the bed, straddles her, kisses her hard.   
  
“I want you,” the Doctor says.[ “I want you, it’s always you - "](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-FPimCmbX8)  
  
“Show me.”  
  
There’s a tickling sensation at her midriff, and the Doctor realises Missy’s underdone her trousers. **I mean Missy's always gonna be INVOLVED tho.** Missy takes the Doctor’s wrist, guides the Doctor’s hand to the Doctor’s own waistband. The Doctor shakes Missy off, slides her hand down into her pants of her own volition. She’s never been on the receiving end like this, and the warm, slick wetness that is her own body, her own cunt - it’s almost a shock. The Doctor breathes out, and smiles down at Missy as Missy smiles up at her.  
  
“You know how to work it,” Missy says, rubbing the Doctor’s waist. “The orientation is just a little different.” **So this idea is beginning to interest me more and more, like. The Doctor's (presumably) got a vagina now and has slept with people with them before, but this is the first time she's had one of her own. It's like driving a left-handed car for the first time, when you've been an accomplished right-hand driver your entire life.**  
  
The Doctor slides her fingers through her own wetness, exploring herself, slowly, carefully. As she does, Missy takes the Doctor’s free hand, twists it and presses a kiss to her palm. **It's about the tenderness.** The Doctor moves her fingers back up, gasps when she brushes over her clit. She does so again, teasing at it with her fingertips.  
  
“Let’s get these off you,” Missy says, and yanks at the Doctor’s trousers.   
  
“ _Yes_.” **So the italics mirror Missy earlier, with "Doctor." And it's meant to show the Doctor is much more on board with this now she's in control of the situation.**  
  
There’s a flurry of movement and Missy is unlacing the Doctor’s boots as the Doctor shoves her trousers down, but waits until Missy is watching to slide her pants down her thighs, over her knees. **Again, this makes the Doctor active in this event.** Missy yanks the Doctor’s underwear off from around her ankles, tosses them across the room.  
  
“Get back in there,” Missy says, and grins when the Doctor laughs, lies back on the bed. “Go on.”  
  
The Doctor does, rubbing at her clit; she winces when she catches it with the corner of her nail. **Not based on a true story.** Missy takes the opportunity to shuck the rest of her silky pyjamas, tossing them in a staticky bundle across the room **I just liked this detail, so I'm drawing attention to it**. Her eyes narrow as she watches the Doctor moving on the rumpled bedclothes, her breath coming in little gasps and starts.  
  
“It’s a lot easier when you’ve done it before, even if it’s on someone else,” Missy says.  
  
The Doctor finds herself spreading across the mattress, opening her legs, **this is a nod back to the monologue she has at the start about taking up space, but I didn't make much more of it, I had too many balls in the air,** twisting her head around as she touches herself, her mouth open as she gasps; Missy matches her, her lips open as she watches, her eyes bright and fascinated and fascinating **they're so into each other, they're the WORST**. The Doctor swallows, looking up at Missy.  
  
“Kiss me,” the Doctor says.  
  
“Yes,” says Missy, and licks into the Doctor’s mouth, her fingers wrapping around the bottom of the Doctor’s jaw, the top of her throat. **Me, squinting at the Eiffel Tower scene in Spyfall part 2: "how exactly is he holding her neck?"** “Imagine, Doctor, if my tongue was in your cunt instead.”  
  
That sends a hot sudden shudder down the Doctor’s spine, and her hips sort of— flick upwards. Missy snickers against the Doctor’s cheek. The Doctor moans, slides one of her own fingers inside herself, keeps her free hand working at her clit. **As I've said before, a lot of commentary when it gets to the sex stuff does become "and then they fucked," or in this case "and then she rubbed."**  
  
“Can I be of assistance?” Missy asks, lips brushing the skin just below the Doctor’s ear. “Oh, Doctor, if you could see yourself. This is the hottest thing I’ve seen in a very, very long time.” **Shouldn't have said hottest. Missy doesn't say that in this context.**  
  
“You said you were just going to watch - “ the Doctor interrupts herself with a gasp, as she curls her finger. “Oh - “ **For some reason my computer has started fucking up my talking marks and I cbf fixing them all. I do notice, I know they're there.**  
  
Instead of answering, Missy brushes her hand over the Doctor’s right nipple, then the left. Ripples of heat move down the Doctor’s body, pooling inside her. Missy shifts, laves her hot, wet tongue across the Doctor’s breast, and then bites. The Doctor groans, surprising herself with how loud it is, and grinds down on her clit with her palm. **The Master, like the Doctor, does like to be hands on, regardless. Missy's just giving her a push. Metaphorically.**  
  
“God, _Missy_ \- “  
  
The Doctor’s body burns as she pumps her fingers in and out, presses on her clit; Missy sucks at the skin of her breast, and the Doctor knows there’ll be a mark and she loves that, and then -   
  
She comes. She hears herself cry out, her skin hot and her slick fingers working away at her clit even as it becomes almost painful; she feels Missy’s hot mouth and sharp teeth on her neck, and then -   
  
“Wow,” the Doctor says, and laughs.   
  
Missy laughs too, kisses the Doctor on the cheek, the corner of her mouth. The Doctor laughs against Missy’s lips, tries to kiss her - then the Doctor yelps as Missy, quick as a flash, presses down on her tender clit. It’s like a shock, pain and pleasure but just too much, too much -   
  
“Couldn’t resist,” Missy says. “Look at you, putting a show like that, all for me.”  
  
“Not all for you,” the Doctor says, still trying to get her breath back.   
  
The Doctor rolls over and kisses Missy, letting her hand slide down the soft curves of her ribs, her waist, and then up to her hip. Their thighs press together, soft, as Missy nips at the Doctor’s lip.  
  
“Doctor, Doctor, Doctor,” Missy murmurs. “Watching you.”  
  
“Mm?”  
  
Missy strokes the Doctor’s messed hair back, tugs lightly at the strands. “You know what watching you, did to me? Feeling that bright, burning heat in your body?”  
  
“You liked that?” The Doctor asks. Of course Missy did. The Master always likes to watch. “Do you want me to - um - ”  
  
“You really never can do dirty talk,” Missy says, and kisses the Doctor again. She moves, lies beside the Doctor, trails her fingertips over the swell of the Doctor’s hip. **The hip. I'm writing some scenes with 13 and O (she doesn't know he's the Master) and there's a lot of hip touching. It's something about the strength of the bone and how it helps cradle a baby...have I said too much? Also, hips, blades, but here's it's just soft, and womanly curves (not all women have curves but you know).** “Personally I’d like to sit on your face and ride it until I’m screaming, do you have any input? I know you’re a little out of practise.” **You fucking KNOW 12 LOVED THAT SHIT.**

 **(That's it, that's the entire comment.)**  
  
They didn’t have sex in the **Vault (they did, in my headcanon, btu I feel this worked better, it meant there was more tension of one kind, more at stake.** It was about the imbalance; it was about the prisoner-jailer setup; **It's about agency, and I'm suddenly glad I have counselling tomorrow.** it was about knowing at least one place had to remain purely a place about their pasts and their presents and futures in the platonic sense. Well, not platonic. At least, not physical. They’d played some very intense games of chess in lieu of anything physical. **Snerk.** That had fallen apart once the Doctor and Bill had gotten stuck on Mars, and Missy had come for them (at the request of Nardole).  
  
That meant that when Missy had moved into the TARDIS proper, they’d more or less defiled every flat surface in every room numbered with a base-10 happy prime below 500 within a week. **Me, googling frantically: interesting maths number pattern things.** It had gotten very odd in the anti-grav room (room 139). **This is one of those ideas that I will never write, because it will never be better than the shit people can imagine for themselves, you filthy little demons.** Missy takes the Doctor’s wrist and lifts her hand to her mouth, laps at her fingers. Missy hums.  
  
“You taste great,” she says, **which is similar to a line Simm has during Ten's last episodes,** and then nips the Doctor’s fingertip. She drops the Doctor’s hand, kisses her deeply. “What happened in room 139?” Missy asks, her lips brushing the Doctor’s.  
  
“I’d show you,” says the Doctor. “But I don’t trust you in anti-gravity right now.” **So this is like, where the familiar dynamic reasserts itself. They're going to have sex, it's their kind of armistice, but it's got sadness on either side: what Missy's going to discover, and lose, and what the Doctor has already lost with Missy's (perceived) betrayal.**  
  
They kiss again, and the Doctor moves, rolling Missy onto her back. She runs a hand down Missy’s bare torso, so familiar through new eyes, **because she was thinking about their time on the TARDIS,** rests her fingers in the dip beside Missy’s hipbone. She presses her lips there, smiles when Missy strokes her hair back. Missy hums happily as the Doctor uses the hand on her hipbone to part Missy’s thighs. Then, the Doctor licks into Missy’s wet, hot cunt. God, her taste is so familiar, the heat, the way Missy breathes out a soft “ _oh_ ” as the Doctor laps at Missy’s swollen clit. **So yeah, she's done this enough times to know how it works, even if her mouth is new at it.**  
  
There’s pain at the back of her head as Missy winds her fingers through the Doctor’s hair, fixes her in place. The Doctor feels herself getting wet again; she’s never minded Missy enacting a little pain when it’s like this.   
  
Unlike the way she’d touched herself earlier, the Doctor knows exactly what she’s doing here, and it’s - well, she’s not meant to say it, but it’s _ridiculously_ sexy being able to lick, and suck and bite and touch Missy without any instructions, and hear Missy’s moans, feel her shake. **I think I should have made more of this...next time. Obviously Missy's enjoying herself too.**  
  
“Fuck, Doctor - " Missy murmurs, shifting her hips closer to the Doctor’s face. “Doctor - Doctor - "  
  
The Doctor smiles against Missy’s thigh, watches as Missy rubs her nipples, moaning. Missy reaches down clumsily, grabs the Doctor’s hair again.  
  
“More,” she says, and then meets the Doctor’s gaze. Missy grins. “ _Please_.” **So this is meant to leave you sort of nodding along, like yeah, here we go, and then flashback, oh okay that works with the rhythm of this story and then again, the question marks throw you off. You thought you knew where this was going, and here's a curveball.**

  
  
*** * ***   
  


**??.?**   
  
  


It’s the most ridiculously boring faculty ball he’s had to attend so far, but next season’s will probably be worse. He’s no reason to think that, but given the evidence (last season’s faculty ball) it’s a fair assumption. Theta cut out early - he’s there alone, besides, which always makes for awkward seating arrangements - and he’s halfway towards the transport when he comes upon Ushas, who is staring up at the moonrise with a glass of Champagne. **I regret putting in champagne so much. It's only champagne if it's from the Champagne region of France, otherwise it's just sparkling Gallifrey juice.**  
  
“Still dull?” she asks.  
  
“Disturbingly so,” Theta replies, not wanting to stop, lest someone else approach him. “We really do have it down to an art, don’t we?” **I always forget to make the First Doctor/Theta enough of an arsehole, so this was my first deliberate attempt to make him more rude and brusque. He's just trying to fuck off from this party and go for a walk by himself, the grumpy old bastard (I mean he's like....140 here? Idk. He's been out of school, and married for long enough to grow Weary of this shit).**  
  
“Mm. How is - everyone?” **Everyone...as in his wife and child, but we don't know that yet.**  
  
“Excellent, and your family?”  
  
Ushas takes a long drink. “Ingratiating, obsequious - speaking of, your brother?” **And this is meant to be like, wait, if they're talking about his brother separately to everyone, who is everyone?**  
  
Theta chuckles. “About the same. Sorry, Ushas, I must be off.”  
  
“Very well. Do say hello to Koschei for me, next time you see each other.”  
  
“I’ve not seen him for a few months,” Theta says. “But I will.”  
  
“ _Clearly_ ,” says Ushas, with a funny expression, and they both depart. **Ushas has a lot of fingers in a lot of pies. She knows Kosch is back, and knows they've regenerated into a woman and also knows the first thing Koschei is going to do is get Dicked Down.**

 **Actually, they're only pies if they come from the Pie region of France. Otherwise they're just Gallifreyan fruit tarts.**  
  
It takes Theta less than ten minutes to reach the transporter, **I picture Time Lord society as like. Austen's England with worse people, bigger collars and also, lasers,** and a moment to press in the coordinates for the corner of his property; he wants a bit more of a solo walk tonight. This plan fails when he steps out of the transport and there’s a very beautiful, very short woman leaning against one of the leafy spring-fruiting trees. **Why fruit? WELL. This is so off base but in my head, he knocks her up here. This is just me, sort of winking at myself. No, let's say it's foreshadowing.**  
  
He doesn’t recognise her, dark skin and long, black hair pulled back into a braid. **Usually whenever I picture Koschei as a woman, I picture Ruth Negga, but this time I was thinking more like a younger Jo Martin, who plays Ruth!Doctor, she was on my brain when I wrote this. Her bearing is so strong and powerful when she's playing the Doctor, and I wanted young Koschei, a soldier and a hero in her own right, to have that similar energy and power. A Time Lord hero with a long, long way to fall.**  
  
“Evening, Theta,” she says, her voice low. She smirks. "How are you?"  
  
Theta, to his credit, doesn’t drop his jaw but does drop his gaze, dragging it up and down her.  
  
“Hi,” he says. “Uh.”  
  
“You don’t recognise me?” She asks, mock innocent, mock offended. “After all these years.”  
  
“You’ve regenerated,” says Theta. “Kosch.”  
  
“Mm. I’m not surprised you didn’t hear, one of our warship’s reactors exploded, I saved the half of the warship that wasn’t being sucked into the Harmonic Particulator, and the Military High Command was very embarrassed.”  
  
“You saved half a warship?”  
  
“Well, a third,” says Koschei, and steps up so they’re chest to chest, or at least, face to chest. “They’ll need a few repairs. It’s a patch job. I don’t like being short, but I do like the new body otherwise.”  
  
“So this is your…third body,” Theta says slowly. **He'd say more but all the blood is rushing to his penis.** **And he's a little shocked, but mostly horny.**  
  
“A pole went straight through my chest,” Koschei says, brushing her slender hand down her sternum. “I piloted that ship for fifteen minutes with a pole in my chest. With one heart working.” **One day I'll write all my headcanons down. Today is not that day.**  
  
“That’s amazing, Kosch.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
Theta takes her shoulders; feels how slender they are now under his hands. “You’ll be out of regenerations before I’ve even finished with one.”  
  
“I guess I’ll have to finish that one, then,” Koschei says, and grins at him. **Dark foreshadowing, because one day she will kill him. Repeatedly.** “You like it?”  
  
“I always like you, Kosch, but this is something else,” says Theta. He tries to ignore how hard his hearts are pounding, the way he’s gazing at her face. The eyes are the same, at least. She’s always got beautiful eyes. **He just loves her a lot, and she loves him, regardless of their bodies.** “Look at you. How could I not like you? You know how I feel about you.”  
  
“Good. I’m glad.”  
  
“Great.”  
  
“Excellent.”  
  
“Capital.”  
  
“Are you going to kiss me, Theta, or do I have to climb up there myself?”  
  
“I wasn’t sure if you still liked me, if you still like men - "  
  
“I always like _you_ , Theta.” **This is the main conceit of this fic, in reverse; now it's Koschei's (The Master's) first time as a woman, having sex with Theta (The Doctor).**  
  
Theta takes that as permission, and kisses her; it’s been over a year since he touched Koschei and he - she **I'm gonna stop doing this, it's reductive and I can do better** , remains the most familiar, wonderful thing in the world. Koschei winds her new arms around his neck, pulls him until they’re under the shelter of her tree. Her lips travel down his neck, to the very edge of his robes, hot against his skin. Theta traces his hands down her sides, to the new swell of her hips. He cups her face, brings her lips back to his.   
  
“I want you,” Theta says. “[I want you, it’s always you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAe2Q_LhY8g) \- "  
  
“You have me,” says Koschei. She takes one of his wrists, guides his hand to rest between her hearts. “You’ll always have me.” **And this is the response to that phrase we've heard throughout the fic, that we never hear again in full. Because everything changes.**  
  
Theta pushes her up against the tree, drops to his knees in front of her. His hands shaking, he pushes up her tunic, tugs at the waistband of her pants. **I gave them simpler clothes because of all the trouble I had with the Doctor's outfit.** Koschei laughs, kneels to face him. **And here, because there's none of the horrendous history that they'll have together in the future, either of them kneeling isn't a power thing, it's a humbling, worshipful thing.** She, too, begins to fumble with the front of his trousers, kissing him messily, happily. **They're so young, here.** It’s been a long time since they did this.  
  
They fuck, right there on the ground beneath the tree, Koschei straddling Theta as he moves beneath her, staring in wonder at the curve of her new neck and jaw, the brightness of her eyes. She’s hot and wet and wonderful, riding his cock. **This was originally even less explicit, but I was like. It needs something, and then I went too far, and felt they deserved privacy and if it was super explicit it didn't gel as well with the rest of the story, so this is the middle.**  
  
“Fuck, Theta - “ Koschei says, her voice hoarse. “ _Fuck_. You feel - you’re - "  
  
She cries out, high-pitched, when she comes, and Theta has to press his hands over her wonderful mouth. **This is the second moment where people should be like "oh hang on, why does he need to muffle the noises she's making? What's going on?"** She returns the favour, kissing him hard as he comes inside her, and he moans into her mouth, buries his face in her shoulder.  
  
It takes them both a little while to recover, lying under the tree, **trees are symbolic of stuff. Take your pic.** Theta stroking Koschei’s hair back as she blinks over at him in the moonslight. **Gallifrey has two moons too. I just decided.**  
  
“Would you like to come in for dinner?” Theta asks.  
  
Koschei opens her mouth, closes it, and pulls a face. “Just a drink,” she says, finally, carefully neutral. **And again, it's like "wait, why does she have to think about it, behave that way?"** “I don’t have an all-night pass for the base.”  
  
“Marvellous,” Theta says. “I want to spend more time with you, that’s all.”  
  
“As you should.”   
  
He stands, fixes his robes properly, helps Koschei off the ground. She dusts herself off, tosses her hair back. She takes his face in her hands, kisses him again.  
  
“I can still feel you inside me,” she whispers, and then marches off in the direction of the house.   
  
Theta takes a moment to calm down after that comment, **this is a relic of when it was more explicit, they were gonna bang again and then i was like "this is EXCESSIVE"** then hurries after her, across the fields and towards his house.   
  
The servants are all probably off for the night, so he opens the door for himself and Koschei, and is blindsided by a still-awake child hurtling down the stairs. **And this is meant to blindside the readers too like, "oh servants, house, he's probs got a wife, that's par for the - A CHILD????" And Theta just becomes a bit more of an arsehole.**  
  
“Father!” Rewa **Rewa is an anagram of "Ware" as in "Beware." I wish there was more to it - Arah, Tiamat and Marduk are all Assyrian or Babylonian minor deities from memory, I put more effort into those names (used in a different fic) because I knew I'd have to sit with them longer.** runs across the foyer. “How was the ball? Did you see Uncle Brax?” **I do like imagining Theta and Brax as oddly close brothers by Time Lord standards**.  
  
Theta grabs Rewa under her arms, lifts her up onto his hip. “Good evening,” he says. “What are you still doing up?”  
  
“Mother said I could welcome you home,” Rewa says, and pulls a leaf out of Theta’s hair. “And then I have to go to bed, but but - did you come home through the forest?”  
  
“Yes, yes,” says Theta, **there's probably dirt and grass on his back still,** and puts Rewa down quickly. “Rewa, this is an old - friend **already he's struggling with "friend" as they age and their relationship complicates** of mine, Koschei, Koschei from the Academy - "  
  
“Koschei?” asks Tilam, sweeping into the room. “Theta, who - “  
  
“Koschei, an old friend of mine from the Academy,” says Theta. “Koschei of Oakdown, my wife, Tilam, she’s - "  
  
Tilam reaches out, takes Koschei’s hand. “Yes, Koschei, your. Your friend from the Academy.” **I'm a bad feminist, but I did want to sort of paint Tilam as like. It's a political marriage. It's very normal on Gallifrey. She doesn't mind Theta, but it's not Right he has this, friend, this mistress, which is Unofficial. Like, you can have an affair but he's not even doing that the right way. Also this is the worst Time Lord name I've ever come up with, because I needed one quick, and I had a book on the Belanglo Forest Murders next to me.**  
  
“A pleasure,” says Koschei, smiling thinly. “Theta’s told me so much about you.”  
  
“Wonderful, wonderful. About the same he’s told me of you, I’m sure. **Ie Sweet Fuck All.** I’ll fetch Cobek, **literally just Sobek with a C,** he can put something on for a late supper.”  
  
“Mother, can I - "  
  
“Rewa, I said you could stay up until your father got home, and he’s home. Off you go, my darling. One of us will come up to see you in a moment.”  
  
Within a minute, Rewa and Tilam were gone - one upstairs, one to the servant’s quarters. In the sudden, ringing silence, Theta took Koschei’s coat, brushed a couple of blades of grass off the back. **"Oh no."** He felt its weight in his hands, looked at her, keeping his expression carefully neutral. **I feel like when they talk on the Gallifreyan equivalent of the phone or whatever, they Do Not speak of his marriage or kid. They're both wilfully blind in this.**  
  
“You have a child,” Koschei says, slowly.   
  
“I thought you knew that.”  
  
“I did, I did,” says Koschei. “I do. **Or, "I burned so long so quiet you must have wondered if I loved you back. I did, I did, I do." That's what that is meant to echo.  
** It’s just odd to see her, in the flesh as it were.”  
  
“We both know why I went down this path, Kosch,” Theta says, **the weight of a shared history and responsibilities bearing them down,** and gestures towards the sitting room, watching out for Tilam’s return. “Come on through.”

  
*** * ***

  
**13.6**   
  


  
**So then this shifts, from the relative distance of Koschei and Theta in the past (and you know that was a fucking Awkward meal), to the almost domestic comfort of 13 and Missy "now."** The bed shifts as Missy sits on the mattress, her hair wrapped in a towel. The Doctor watches her through half-closed eyes. Her skin is flushed pink from the shower, clashing with the yellow of her dressing gown. **I tend to put Missy in yellow dressing gowns. Daffodils, I like yellow, and it's such an incongrous random colour for the Master to be in.** She reaches out, pats the Doctor’s bare ankle with her still-damp hand.  
  
“Good to see you’re still here,” the Doctor murmurs, and it’s not bitter (mostly). **It's super bitter.**  
  
“Of course I’m still here,” says Missy. **Because to her....why wouldn't she be?**  
  
The Doctor rolls over, pulls the sheets over herself. **Vulnerability; she doesn't mind showing flesh when they're on the same footing but the dynamic has shifted again.** “And you’re still here because-“  
  
“You’re very special to me, you made me come five times in one afternoon, you’re my ride back to Gallifrey?”  
  
Missy tugs at the sheet, grins wickedly when she catches another glimpse of the Doctor’s chest. The Doctor grabs a pillow, hugs it to herself. She sits up against the bedhead, feeling the wrought-iron press into her back. It’s cold, verges on pain (good). **The Doctor's subconsciously realised what she needs to do, and she's shielding herself, shutting away from Missy and also, she's feeling very vulnerable. She just had sex for the first time in this body, with someone who she believes will go on to manipulate her for a century and then leave her to die. I didn't go into that too much because that's such a horrible thing to consider, but it hangs over her, and I think people mostly got that, and that was why no one was like "the Doctor's so cruel pushing Missy to the executioners!" It's justified revenge; if the Doctor had been correct in her assumption. And the Vault was good for them, even though neither will know that.  
**

  
“I don’t know if I can take you to Gallifrey,” the Doctor says, and carefully doesn’t let her expression change. “Right away. We should go on a little trip together, first. Somewhere nice.”  
  
“It sounds like you’re going to take me out to a lake and talk about a rabbit farm,” Missy says. **This is a reference to "Of Mice and Men" where a man is executed just like that. And it's basically what does happen, because Missy knows the Doctor.** She unwraps her hair, starts running her fingers through her dark curls. **The Doctor loves Missy's hair.** “What did you have in mind? Cassed-Nuim? **Misremembered planet name from Star Wars Episode III.** Are you allowed to get brunch there?”  
  
“Not right now,” says the Doctor.   
  
She feels bare. Exposed. Clutching the pillow, the Doctor leans off the side of the bed and finds her dressing-gown where it’s crumpled on the floor. She wriggles into that awkwardly, ignoring Missy’s stare.  
  
“I find the 21st century is a terrible place to hang about if you look female,” Missy says. “If that’s what this is about.” **Missy digging at humanity, almost absent mindedly. She thinks the Doctor is just being modest.**  
  
“Hm? Yeah. You’re probably right,” says the Doctor. “Yes.”  
  
Missy gives her another weird look. “I’ll just be going to the wardrobe, then, try and get something that has a semblance of style out of that mess.” She stands, drops her wet towel on the rumpled bed (rude. Well, the Doctor does that too, but she’s allowed. It’s her bed).  
  
“Actually,” says the Doctor. “Two bedrooms down from here, I think. You should have left a spare outfit in the cupboard in there. Shoes and all.” **She's not packed the bedroom up yet because she can't even face the idea. It's too distressing.**  
  
“Really.” **I should have put more to this, but I think the Doctor is sort of trying to ignore Missy's emotional responses. This "really" could be hopeful, it could be surprised, it could be sad, it could be angry, but the Doctor's just taking in the verbal cue, not the information.**  
  
“Really. You’re here a lot,” the Doctor says (like Missy had a choice). “I can’t really say any more about it.” And she really doesn’t want Missy to ask.  
  
Missy sits again, closer. She leans in, cups the Doctor’s face, kisses her gently.   
  
“What did I do to you this time?”  
  
“Oh, nothing,” the Doctor says, and runs her thumb along Missy’s lower lip. **This, to me, is a power play. Always has been, always will be, and I don't know why.** “Go get dressed; I’ll take us to Czaphis with a picnic.” **Czaphis was like. Based on "Czar."**  
  
“You’re going to make a picnic.” **I want it on the record, I don't think the Doctor is a bad cook, I think they just have weird food preferences. I actually don't like the trope where someone's like the absent-minded genius is the WORST COOK EVER like honestly cooking is applied chemistry and the Doctor is a good chemist???? Shits me. They DO eat weird shit though imo, by Time Lord and human standards.**  
  
“I thought the TARDIS might, to be honest.”  
  
Something that the Doctor knew even before becoming intimately familiar with Missy’s ablutions in the Vault, was that she took ages to get ready. Of corset took her a long time (ha - should she start making more puns? Probably not). **Little humour for ya before the Doctor sends Missy to her death :)** The hair and makeup along **ah, fuck me. Gotta fix that.** took over an hour.  
  
This gave the Doctor plenty of time to dress; to find a picnic basket with a jar of Vegemite and some stale bread inside (so the TARDIS was very unhappy then); **but WHAT is the TARDIS unhappy about? About Missy's presence (which the Doctor thinks it is) or about the dynamic failing, or about how the Doctor is feeling towards Missy?** to examine a few sets of historical TARDIS location data sets deep in the information banks; to preset them before Missy sees what her hands are doing.  
  
“It’s a lot easier when someone else ties my corset,” Missy says, sauntering into the console room. She’s perfectly made up, laced up, hair up. She’s gorgeous (she’s a long way off redemption). **This is the Doctor just trying to stay shut down, disinterested, clinical.**  
  
“I think that would have distracted me a little too much,” the Doctor says (a large too much, if she’s honest). “And I’m hungry.”  
  
“Hm.”  
  
Missy leans against the railing, watches the Doctor check the scanner. **She's suspicious, but not too wary.** The Doctor flips a switch, shifts the main lever and takes them and the TARDIS through the timestream, straight onto a planet Missy’s never seen before and the Doctor had hoped to never see again.  
  
“How hungry?” Missy asks. “Because this ship has clearly never gotten over the whole thing with me and the Eye of Harmony, and then the paradox machine - “ **Ah, Missy's not noticed the TARDIS is being vaguely nice....neutral, at her. But in this case, the TARDIS is just helping fulfill the time line.**  
  
“Yes. Stop looking in the basket, Missy, we’ll find a restaurant.”  
  
“Fair,” says Missy, and she looks up from the picnic basket to find the Doctor standing right in front of her.  
  
The Doctor brushes her fingertips over Missy’s cheekbone. “You’re so beautiful,” she says. **This has accidental Buffy killing Angel after he stops being Angelus vibes, and I don't even like Buffy.**  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
The Doctor leans in, kisses Missy gently, still holding her face. Missy kisses her back, running her hands down the curves of the Doctor’s body, squeezing her hips. **Hips! The new forehead press.**  
  
“You can always trust me,” the Doctor says.   
  
Missy raises an eyebrow at that. “I don’t trust people who tell me to trust them.” **You never should.**  
  
“You don’t trust anyone.”  
  
“True,” says Missy. “So, lunch?”  
  
“I thought it was brunch?”  
  
“Time is meaningless but meals are important, my dear.”  
  
The Doctor grins. “After you, then,” she says, gesturing at the TARDIS doors.   
  
“Hate to see me go, love to watch me leave?” Missy says, walking towards them. “And all that?”  
  
“And then some.” **Very happy to see the back of her this time.**  
  
The Doctor follows Missy closely as they approach the doors. Missy pulls them open, squints into the dirty grey light.   
  
“Is it winter?” she asks, and the Doctor, hating herself, pushes Missy gently in the back, just like she’s moving her along.   
  
Casual, casual. Missy lets herself step out onto the gravel outside, swivels to face the Doctor, still in the TARDIS. Missy’s face shifts, from mere suspicion, to outright horror.  
  
“Emenatori - “ she says. “Doctor, no, they’re going to - “  
  
The Doctor slams the TARDIS doors shut in Missy’s face, throws herself back into the console room. The timer on the dematerialisation circuit goes off with an anti-climatic ‘ding’ and the TARDIS begins to move in time and space, away from Emenatori, the planet of the executioners, **just in case readers had forgotten what I'd called it,** where Missy was trying to escape from in the first place.  
  
The Doctor breathes out. She touches her cheek, and it’s dry (mostly). **She's pushing that down, all aside. She's not crying. She's not.**  
  
“Sorry,” she says, aloud, and pulls a face. She remembers the daffodils, and Cybermen, and Missy’s voice saying ‘no’ and her following the Master off to God knows where, and wonders if she really is. **I don't think she is.**

*** * ***

**13.1**

First things first. **As she says at the top of the story. First things first. This is also a great phrase if you're not sure where to start with something: first things first, and then just rant your way through what needs to happen.** The fam are all squared away; Ryan is comforting Yaz in the TARDIS, Graham is making tea for all three of them (that’s comfort, that’s British, that’s Graham). **I love Graham. They should have killed him in the finale, but I love Graham.** And now, she’s looking for O. She doesn’t exactly know why; **you have a crush Doctor, that's why,** he lives here, this is his patch, he knows this area. But she’d like to see him.   
  
They’re fairly sure the creatures of light aren’t coming back (how sure? Well, if hopeful is sure, she’s 100% hopeful, but only 50% sure). But O seems sure, and hey, it’s nice not to be the only genius in the room. Where was she? It’s night. The Doctor steps out of the shack, through the squeaky screen door. O is where she thought he would be, standing on the edge of yellow light spilling from the shack’s windows, where it melds into the inky blue-black of the outback, staring at the sky. **Half in the dark, half in the light. It's hard to make POV characters foreshadow when they don't know what they're foreshadowing.**  
  
“Hey, Doctor,” he says, not turning around. “Just needed some air.” **Ah, but how did he know it was her without turning around? She misses that clue.**  
  
“There’s air in the house,” the Doctor says. “I always say, don’t wander off, and someone always wanders off.”  
  
“Technically you’ve wandered off, to find me,” O says, and he turns and smiles at her. He’s got a nice smile, his face lit up warm from the house. “So I think we cancel each other out.”  
  
The Doctor stands beside him, breathing in the cold, fresh air of the outback. **People always forget how cold the outback gets at night.**  
  
“No cloud cover,” O says, pointing. “It’ll be around 8 degrees tonight. Do you want my jacket?” **Being a deliberate clueless gentleman. Men offering you their clothes? Good shit.**  
  
She left her coat draped over Yaz, while Yaz had been on the couch in the shack. O didn’t have many spare blankets. Or any (why didn’t he?). **Another clue she misses; O's got lots of books etc but there's very little "personal" stuff that a home should have. It's like when you are at a friend's sharehouse trying to find a blanket for someone passed out on the floor and all there is a...a stained and suspicious Taz the Tasmanian Devil Looney Tunes blanket and a really nice silk napkin in the otherwise empty linen cupboard.**  
  
“Nah, I’m fine,” she says. “Two hearts, lower internal body temperature. You should be asking me for my jumper.”  
  
“Can I - "  
  
“No, you’ll stretch it out,” the Doctor says, and O laughs. He’s got a nice laugh. He’s got a really nice smile. **She's just...noticing, appreciating, noticing she's appreciating.** “I only have about fifteen more of these.”  
  
“Fair enough,” says O. “You know, this is in the middle of what was the original site they were going to test nuclear bombs on, back in the 50s. They changed their mind because there’s a gully nearby that would have thrown off their readings.” **The Master, reminding the Doctor of the[fucked up shit](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-24/maralinga-nuclear-tests-ground-zero-lesser-known-history/11882608) the British/Aussies did to a country that wasn't even theirs. There's a great recent drama series out of Australia about it, called "Operation Buffalo." I would recommend it. **  
  
The Doctor shakes her head. **And the Master thinks his dig has landed.** “Humans. You love finding bigger and better ways of murdering each other.”  
  
“Yes. Sorry.”  
  
“Not you,” the Doctor says. “You - all of you, you’re special.” **The Master: Ah, fuck, here she goes with the rhapsody of humanity.**  
  
“You’re not so bad yourself, Doctor,” says O, turning to face her. “Don’t forget that.”  
  
The Doctor turns too, looks up at him, half in the light. “Eh,” she says. “I go alright.”  
  
“I think you’re spectacular,” says O. “Doctor?” **Spectacular.**  
  
“Hm?”  
  
He cups her face. He’s got very nice hands, rough and warm. **You do not live in the bush, for more than a year, and not get rough hands. And I honestly think the Master did just fuck around in the outback for a few years. The Master is like a cat, or a snake. He's happy to lie in wait.** O leans in, but the Doctor moves faster and kisses him on the lips, feeling him smile against her mouth. O makes a low noise, runs his thumbs over her cheekbones. It tingles.   
  
O is kissing her. She is kissing O. He’s warm, compared to her, compared to the night breeze, and he smells lovely, and he’s solid as she leans into him, up against him. One of his large hands rest on her waist, the other strokes her hair back. He keeps stroking her hair, even after he pulls away. **As the Doctor loves Missy's hair, the Master loves the 13th Doctor's hair. It's vivid yellow around his fingers.**  
  
“Hi,” he says, and smiles at her.   
  
“Hi,” says the Doctor, and realises she’s blushing (she doesn’t blush. She’s millennia old and she’s kissed handsome men in the Australian desert before. **Love an overspecific reference.** She’s not blushing).   
  
“I’ve wanted to do that for so long, I didn’t want to wait any longer,” says O, and there’s a funny note in his voice. **This is all of the Master's pent-up energy (both evil plan and like, his horniness). He's gleeful everything is progressing well, hell, even better than he could have hoped.** “I hope it’s okay.”  
  
The Doctor touches her mouth, smiles. “Of course it’s okay,” she says. “I’ve not been kissed in this body before.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“That’s your name,” the Doctor says, and O kisses her again. 

**Okay so you know the famous album by Pink Floyd, The Wall? Great album. Anyway, it was written to loop in on itself, so it starts with a tiny voice saying "_--we came in -- " before the music starts, and the last song ends with the same music, and closes off with the voice saying "isn't this where --" and it always leaves me off-kilter. So originally I didn't like the last line of this, there's no sense of finality, but this isn't really the end of this story; it ends with the Doctor pushing Missy out of the TARDIS. This is the prologue to why she does that. So it's like, you read this, and it's sort of meant to make you go back up to the top and just read the first couple of scenes again.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, if you didn't, that's chill. Comments/questions/critiques are always appreciated :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, and I hope you all enjoyed. Comments and critique are always appreciated.


End file.
